James Gregory's Mathematical Work: A Study based chiefly on his Letters

Abstract

James Gregory was the third son of the Rev. John Gregory, minister of Drumoak, a small parish near Aberdeen. His mother was the daughter of David Anderson of Finzeach in Aberdeenshire, and related to Alexander Anderson, a friend of Vieta and a teacher of mathematics in Paris. Gregory is said to have received his first lessons in mathematics from his mother, but in due course he passed on first to the Grammar School and then to Marischal College, Aberdeen, where he graduated. In 1663 his Optica Promota was published in London, and he spent some time in that city after the publication of his book in the hope of securing facilities for constructing a telescope on the principles he had laid down in the Optica. His efforts were however unsuccessful, and he went to Italy where he continued his mathematical studies. After a residence of three years in Padua he returned to Scotland in 1668. In 1669 he was appointed to the Chair of Mathematics at St Andrews; in that position he had a busy and, as the years passed, a rather troubled life, so that he was glad to accept a call in 1674 to be Professor of Mathematics at Edinburgh where, as he says in a letter to a friend in Paris, “my salary is double and my encouragements much greater.” His Edinburgh professorship was however very brief as he died in October 1675. An interesting sketch of his life is given by Agnes Grainger Stewart in The Academic Gregories, a volume of the “Famous Scots Series.”