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Gregory, David, 1659-1708 (professor of mathematics, University of Edinburgh, and Savilian Professor of Astronomy, University of Oxford)

 Person

Biography

David Gregory (1659-1708), astronomer and mathematician, was the first university professor to teach astronomy in the language of Newtonian gravitation. He is famous for his influential textbook, Astronomiae Physicae et Geometricae Elementa, (1702). Having studied a while at Marischal College, Aberdeen, and without graduating, Gregory took the Mathematics Chair at Edinburgh University in 1683, by unseating the incumbent there in a series of public debates. It helped that the chair had been occupied briefly some years before by his esteemed uncle, James Gregorie (1638-1675). David was awarded a hasty MA for decorum's sake, even though he had never studied in Edinburgh, and taught for seven years. His lecture notes show that he covered a broad range of subjects, some of them not in mathematics. He also taught a little optics, mechanics, hydrostatics, and even anatomy, from Galen. His first significant publication was in 1684, the Exercitatio geometrica de dimensione figurarum , in which he extended his uncle's work on the method of quadratures by infinite series.

In 1689 there sprang bad blood between the university masters and their paymasters, the city council, initially having to do with pay cuts and treacherous electioneering. There quickly developed a web of sleights and grudges, in the course of which Gregory was libelled before the new Hanoverian committee of visitation as it toured all the Scottish educational bodies following the recent change of government. He was said to be a violent, drunken atheist, who kept women in his chambers and once visited a prisoner in the Canongate tollbooth; worse, he was a superficial teacher and a crypto-Cartesian. Surrounded by influential friends, and not holding any demonstrably radical views in politics, science, or deportment, he was finally not dismissed from the faculty as many of his colleagues were, nor even required to swear the oath of allegiance to the Hanoverian monarchy or the religious Confession of Faith either.

Yet by 1691 he saw fit to cadge a fresh appointment comfortably far away, in Oxford. This was the Savilian Chair of Astronomy. In its pursuit he came to know personally the figures with whom he had lately been in professional correspondence, like Isaac Newton (1642-1727), Edmond Halley (1656-1742), and John Flamsteed (1646-1719), the first Astronomer Royal. He was given another MA to suit the post, and a desultory MD; he was elected to the Royal Society, and appointed a master commoner of Balliol College. He spent the rest of his life as Savilian Professor, where he became something of an evangelist for Newtonian science among the Cartesians. He even troubled to travel to the continent, to exchange views with prominent colleagues like Jan Hudde (1628-1704) and Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695). He quarrelled occasionally with Newton and Halley over various points of research, and with Flamsteed over tutoring maths in the Duke of Gloucester's household, but generally carried on very productively.

His Edinburgh lectures he retooled by 1695 into the enduringly influential optics textbook, Catoptricae et dioptricae sphaericae elementa, whose special contribution was to propose an achromatic telescope, whose combined lenses ought to counteract colour aberrations. By 1702 his principle work went to press, the remarkable Astronomiae physicae et geometricae elementa. This was the first textbook to cast astronomy completely in the alloy of Newtonian gravitational principles. Newton himself assisted with the work, which at least one publisher immodestly declared would 'last as long as the sun and the moon'. It certainly lasted most of the eighteenth century. His final big publication was a joint edition of Euclid, which appeared in 1703. All through his career he complemented his monographs with a steady flow of journal articles and published correspondence in mathematics and astronomy; his special interests included the catenary curve, eclipses, the contemporary 'parallax problem', and the very famous Cassinian orbital model for heavenly bodies.

Late in his life, in 1707, the Act of Union between Scotland and England effectively ended Gregory's studies, calling him away from his work on an edition of Apollonius (eventually finished by Halley), and setting him to work instead on rationalising the Scottish Mint, even as Newton was doing at the London Mint, and on calculating the enormously complex 'Equivalent', a payment to Scotland to offset new customs and excise duties. His health failed him during his extensive official travelling. David Gregory died in a Maidenhead inn a year later. David Gregory was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1692 and was made honorary fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh in 1705.

Found in 11 Collections and/or Records:

Folio B, c1669-c1708

 Series — Box Dk.1.2: Series Coll-33/Quarto A; Series Coll-33/Folio B; Series Coll-33/Folio D; Series Coll-33/Folio E
Identifier: Coll-33/Folio B
Scope and Contents The papers of David Gregory consist of: Most of the scientific content of Folio B comes from early in Gregory's career. It includes an index of later letters of John Collins (1625-1683) to James Gregorie (1638-1675), a number of Edinburgh lectures in geometry, mechanics, and optics, and some tables and manuscript pieces of 'Elementa Catoptricae et Dioptricae', the 'Institutes of Astronomy', and the...
Dates: c1669-c1708

Folio C, c1680-c1708

 Series — Volume Dc.1.61: Series Coll-33/Folio C
Identifier: Coll-33/Folio C
Scope and Contents The papers of David Gregory consist of: These are mostly handwritten items, bound together as a volume, though with some loose insertions of manuscripts which had strayed, some of them with modern annotations concerning their provenance. Their scope and content is as David Gregory indexed them, save for the missing items, which consist of two dozen papers and letters on general physics and maths, and...
Dates: c1680-c1708

Folio E, c1692-c1708

 Series — Box Dk.1.2: Series Coll-33/Quarto A; Series Coll-33/Folio B; Series Coll-33/Folio D; Series Coll-33/Folio E
Identifier: Coll-33/Folio E
Scope and Contents The constitution of the Folio E papers of David Gregory follows: The documents' order is random, but the collection has several foci. One is David Gregory the academic's need for books. Numerous shopping lists for titles abroad reflect this, (one of which also includes a requirement for tea), as do inventories of other people's libraries nearer to home. Another focus in the collection is Gregory's public...
Dates: c1692-c1708

Index Chartarum in M.S. C. in folio, 1700

 Item
Identifier: Coll-33/Folio C [index]
Scope and Contents

An index, in Gregory's hand, to the material he designated as Folio C.

Dates: 1700

Notanda D.J. phys. et math. Lond: Martio 1693 cum Fatio, 31 March 1693

 Item
Identifier: Coll-33/Quarto A [37]
Scope and Contents Notes to an extended conversation with Fatio de Duillier, fellow enthusiast of Newtonian science at Oxford, and especially important to Gregory between December 1691 and May 1694, when he was cut off from direct contact with Sir Isaac Newton, whom he had offended in a published commentary on his 'abrumpent' mathematical series. Topics include magnetic attraction, refraction and colour, and movement of solids through fluid, with anecdotal remarks by de Duiller about ships, tides, and the...
Dates: 31 March 1693

Observatio Eclipsis lunaris Oxonii, May 1696

 Item
Identifier: Coll-33/Folio C [1]
Scope and Contents

Tabulated observational data of the 1696 lunar eclipse which Gregory watched from Oxford.

Dates: May 1696

Quarto A, c1680-c1708

 Series — Box Dk.1.2: Series Coll-33/Quarto A; Series Coll-33/Folio B; Series Coll-33/Folio D; Series Coll-33/Folio E
Identifier: Coll-33/Quarto A
Scope and Contents The papers of David Gregory in Quarto A consist of: 107 manuscript papers and an index, relating to: theoretical physics, including optics, especially treatises on refraction and colour, on mechanics, specifically on velocity, gravitation, centrifugal and centripetal force, and the movement of solids through fluid, and an occasional thought on magnetic attraction. Applied physics, considering ships,...
Dates: c1680-c1708

Queries to My Lord Tarbat from Mr Lloyd of Oxon, after 1690

 Item
Identifier: Coll-33/Quarto A [38.2]
Scope and Contents

An Oxford colleague's list of questions about resources for Irish studies in Scotland, probably for remanding by Gregory to his old ally in the Edinburgh Visitation troubles, "My Lord Tarbat", who was George Mackenzie, Viscount Tarbat, first Earl of Cromarty.

Dates: after 1690

Querys to Sr Humphrey Mackworth June 1706, June 1706

 Item
Identifier: Coll-33/Quarto A [49.2]
Scope and Contents A list of questions about the manner of valuation of Welsh assets in light of political "Accession" to England. The precedents were doubtless of interest to Gregory, about to start intensive work on analogous Scottish issues in connection with the Act of Union, which came into force within a year. Calculating the customs and excise "Equivalent" compensatory payment was almost certainly the particular job before him here. Sir Humphry Mackworth (1657-1727) was a Shropshire politician and...
Dates: June 1706

Quo ad D.G. spectant in Pitcarnii Probl. de inventoribus, after August 1688

 Item
Identifier: Coll-33/Quarto A [42]
Scope and Contents Commentary on Archibald Pitcairne's Edinburgh edition of Solutio Problematis de Historicis; seu de Inventoribus Dissertatio, (1688) of which an enlarged edition appeared at Leiden in 1693. This tract made Pitcairne's subsequent medical career on the continent for its vindication of the claims of William Harvey to the discovery of the circulation of the blood. It contains other things as well, notably the first public presentation of Gregory's second method of...
Dates: after August 1688

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