A late draft of an elementary development of Christiaan Huygens' work on the cycloid, that finally appeared anonymously in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society for February 1697 (nos 225, 424).
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Notes from a paediatric anatomy demonstration, that appears to have dealt with certain birth defects. Followed by what appears to be a note about an actuarial problem concerning human senescence; several individuals who have worked on it are named, including Christiaan Huygens. Then follows a diagram of a machine designed by Jan Hudde for descrying a curve of changing slope. Last is a note about a conversation with Hudde about calculating dimensions and focal length of lenses in...
Diagram and mathematical description of a foliate curve. A modern hand has pencilled in "7 a Schooten", referring to geometer Frans van Schooten (1615-1660).
Extract of a volume (only partially cited) found by David Gregory in Amsterdam. He captions this "F: a. Schoten', suggesting that the work transcribed is that of geometer Frans van Schooten (1615-1660). The work concerns curves and quadratures, and is laced with comparisons to the work of Jan Hudde.
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Batavia is a seventeenth-century cognomen for the Netherlands, to which David Gregory went in the spring of 1693, mostly to talk science with Christiaan Huygens. This document is a list of some books he wished to buy for himself and for friends back home, if he could find them. They covered Palladius, Thucydides, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Erasmus, "all I can find of the Roman Authors at Amst[erdam]", and others. On the reverse is a list of topics he wished to discuss when he finally sat...
[Arthur Ashley] Sykes' objection to what appears to be the Cassini curve, over the general issue of velocity and centripetal force. Refuted by Gregory underneath on 20 June 1697.
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An algebraic discussion of quadrature, in a hand other than Gregory's (counter to the "meam" in his index title, the final word of which, is obscured by a wrinkle in the paper). The strips on the back are notes, in Gregory's hand, about finding a new French translation of the Olynthian orations of Demosthenes and various ancient mathematics texts. These notes Gregory indexed as his "Batavia" shopping list of May 1693, verbatim, GB 0237 David Gregory Dk.1.2.1 Quarto A [31], and a note about...
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...
