The controversy between Colin MacLaurin and George Campbell over complex roots, 1728?1729

Abstract

By far the most famous of 17 th and 18 th century mathematical controversies is the NEWTON-LEIBNIZ dispute over who discovered the calculus. But NEWTON'S early work on algebra afterwards gave rise to another little known dispute over priority, one between the mathematicians COLIN MACLAURIN, Professor at the University of Edinburgh, and GEOR6E CAMVBELL. 1 Unfortunately, not all of their correspondence now survives but sufficient remains for the whys and wherefores of the controversy to be explained in some detail. Let us set the scene. At Cambridge, between the years 1673 and 1683, ISAAC NEWTON delivered professorial lectures on algebra which at the time remained unprinted, z In 1707,