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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 318 Collections and/or Records:

D.G. de Apollonii Problemato..., c1690

 Item
Identifier: Coll-33/Folio B [21]
Scope and Contents

A study from the ancient geometer.

Dates: c1690

D.G. Inventio Curva...Cycloidii, 1698-1700

 Item
Identifier: Coll-33/Quarto A [64]
Scope and Contents

A brachistochrone proof.

Dates: 1698-1700

D.G. Pat. de aquatione temporis soliodula, c1693

 Item
Identifier: Coll-33/Quarto A [16]
Scope and Contents

A 'hypothesis' about the solar period, not in Gregory's hand.

Dates: c1693

D.G.'s Demonstratio Methodi Slusii de Tang., c1683

 Item
Identifier: Coll-33/Folio C [143]
Scope and Contents

Gregory's early attempt to prove Sluse's rule for tangents from Fermat or from Barrow.

Dates: c1683

DG's letter to Dr Aldrich about the present series ..., 11 October 1694

 Item
Identifier: Coll-33/Quarto A [103]
Scope and Contents

English note about the editorial presentation of a published series. Henry Aldrich was Gregory's friend and also Dean of Christ Church.

Dates: 11 October 1694

Diocesan notes, November 1690

 Item
Identifier: Coll-33/Folio E [026]
Scope and Contents

English record of a diocesan conclave in King's College that discussed interrelations between the Presbyterian communion and its "sister church". Some arithmetic, verso.

Dates: November 1690

Diophanti Liber Secundis, c1703

 Item
Identifier: Coll-33/Folio C [13]
Scope and Contents

Reading notes from Diophantus.

Dates: c1703

Dr Gregorys solution of the same, s.d.

 Item
Identifier: Coll-33/Folio C [95]
Scope and Contents

Gregory's solution to the specific gravity problem in item C 94.

Dates: s.d.

Dr Oliphants Solution of Mr Boyles Probl: about the specifick Gravity of bodys, s.d.

 Item
Identifier: Coll-33/Folio C [94]
Scope and Contents

A basic problem in physics. The hand may not be Gregory's. ' Dr Oliphant' may be Charles Oliphant, disputant in a furore over an anonymous tract lampooning Archibald Pitcairne in 1695, or perhaps David Oliphant, librarian to Glasgow University 1691-1671. Item 94 in Quarto A happens to be titled, 'Memoranda pro Arch Pitcarnio et C. Oliphant'. See also unlabelled page between C 100 and C 102 (which is not C 101--that being out of sequence, glued to the back of C 97).

Dates: s.d.

D.T. Nova methodus determinandi Maxima et Minima, c1690

 Item
Identifier: Coll-33/Folio C [32]
Scope and Contents

Hand-copy of an article (Act. Eruditorum Lipsiae, Mar. 1683) by Tschirnhaus, on maxima and minima. The hand may not be Gregory's.

Dates: c1690

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