There was some controversy when Gregory returned to Britain from Padua over whether his discoveries were original. Gregory to continue his outstanding mathematical research.įollowing this, Gregory went on to work at the University of Edinburgh, where he held the Chair of Mathematics. Later that year he travelled back to Scotland to take up a position as the first Regius Chair of Great Scots – James Gregory Mathematics at St Andrews University, a post that had been created for him by King Charles II to allow On his return to England in 1668, he was immediately elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS). Gregory published Geometriae pars universalis right at the end of his Italian sojourn before he left Padua, in which he makes the first systematic attempt to document calculus. Gregory had now established himself amongst the intellectual elite. It is extraordinary to think that a man of only 29 years of age could have achieved so much. In 1667 Gregory published a paper entitled Vera Circuli et Hyperbolae Quadratura in which he was able to demonstrate how the areas of a circle and hyperbola – a symmetrical open curve which continues indefinitely – could be obtained via infinite convergent series, a series with no defined first and last terms. It would eventually be the Oxford physician Robert Hooke who built the first Gregorian telescope a decade later. However, their attempts to build Gregory’s telescope ended in failure. Therefore he enlisted the help of John Collins, an accountant and publisher who corresponded extensively with the foremost scientists and mathematicians of the day. Gregory admitted that he was not a practical man and therefore could not construct the telescope himself, neither did he know an optician who could make one on his behalf. The phrase ‘elliptic inequality’ refers to Kepler’s discoveries in this area. In the preface Gregory says: ‘Moved by a certain youthful ardour and emboldened by the invention of the elliptic inequality, I have girded myself with these optical speculations, chief among which is the demonstration of the telescope.’ The same year, aged only 24, Gregory published Optica Promota, a paper describing his design for a reflecting telescope and theories on the way the transit of Venus can be used to measure the distance of the Earth from the sun. Sometime between his university days and his days on the road, Gregory had begun looking seriously at optics and the construction of telescopes. Here he lived with fellow Scot, James Caddenhead, a professor of philosophy. We know that Gregory, by now a man in his mid-20s, travelled to London in 1663 and on to Padua in Italy the following year. Janet’s brother was also a pupil of François Viète, a French amateur mathematician and astronomer who introduced the first systematic algebraic notation in his book In artem analyticam isagoge. Janet had a great enthusiasm for geometry which she passed onto her young son. The youngest of three children, Gregory was born on 6 November 1638 in the minister’s house – his father John Gregory was a Church of Scotland minister – in Drumoak, about 15km west of Aberdeen.Īs a young boy he suffered from quartan fever, a malarial fever which recurrs at approximately 72 hour intervals, which afflicted him for around 18 months so he was taught at home by his mother Janet in those early years. Gregory advanced our knowledge in the area of trigonometry (a branch of mathematics which studies the lengths and angles of triangles) when he discovered the ‘infinite series’ for several trigonometric, or circular, functions in which, as the name suggests, the series continues indefinitely rather than having defined first and last terms. A reflector differs from a refracting telescope, which uses lenses, rather than mirrors. This is an optical telescope, which uses either a single or combination of curved mirrors that reflect light and form an image. Gregory was a professor of mathematics at Edinburgh (1674) and St Andrews (1688) universities, a Fellow of the Royal Society and the first person to develop the reflecting telescope, or ‘reflector’, in 1663. However, he is best known for his construction of the famous Gregorian telescope, to which he gave his name, and as the man who first distinguished between convergent and divergent series – convergent refers to one rational result whereas divergent reaches a variety of possible solutions. James Gregory was the Scot who invented the reflecting telescope, discovered infinite series and made huge mathematical advances – all before the age of 30.īorn in November 1638, his entry in the Chambers Dictionary of Biography includes a long list of achievements, theories and discoveries in mathematics, astronomy and physics. Terms and Conditions Placing of Advertisements.
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