James Gregory Biography

      James Gregory Biography

            James Gregory was a Scottish mathematician who was born in the village of Drumoak, Scotland in 1638. He was a very sickly child, therefore he was homeschooled and taught by his mother and later his uncle, who was a student of Viete; a French mathematician. This might have been where he got his thirst for mathematics. While homeschooled James Gregory learned many core subjects including the little known subject of geometry. In 1651 Gregory’s father passed away and Gregory was sent to attend grammar school in Aberdeen, he later went on to study at the Marischal College in 1662.

            After college Gregory traveled to London, there he published his first work called Optica promota (1663). In it he suggested that telescopes would be more effective if they used concave mirrors. Newton later used this idea in his studies without giving credit to Gregory. This paper also added on to Kepler’s description of the telescope. The telescope that Gregory had described is known as the Gregorian telescope. Unfortunately Gregory was not able to secure a job in London and moved to Italy where he continued his research. While in Italy he published Vera circuli et hyperbolae quadrature (1667), and Geometriae pars universalis (1668). This explained how to find the area of a circle or hyperbola. It also focused of convergent and divergent series which later became the foundation for calculus.

            At age 30 Gregory was in London once again where he was elected into the royal society and became chairman of mathematics for St. Andrew’s College in Scotland. Upon returning to Scotland Gregory married widow Mary Jamesome in 1669 and had two daughters and a son with her. James Gregory was not satisfied with the curriculum at St. Andrew’s however his efforts to change it were in vain as the Governing Board of the college refused to allow any changes in the curriculum. Gregory was not the only one who was dissatisfied with the curriculum as students revolted against the administration. During this Gregory was in London again attempting to start up the first public observatory in Britain at St. Andrew’s. The administration decided to blame Gregory for the student revolt and punished Gregory by not giving him his salary.

Luckily for Gregory he was soon offered a job at Edinburg University to be chairman of mathematics there. He did not publish any papers while at Edinburg but he did relate to John Collins an English mathematician the important results of the infinite series (a series that is used in calculus).He also worked with various colleagues in Paris to predict the occurrence of a lunar eclipse. It was here that Gregory was able to predict longitude for the first time.

  However he soon died. Gregory was showing his students the moons of Jupiter when he suffered a stroke and was blinded. A few days later he died.  Many of his unpublished papers stayed hidden until they were published in 1939. In these documents he discovered the interpolation formula and binomial theorem before Newton did. He also discovered Taylor expansion a full forty years before Taylor. He also solved Kepler’s problem of how to divide a semicircle through its diameter and gave the earliest example of a comparison test for convergence. If James Gregory was able to publish those papers he would have been seen as one of the greatest intellectuals and mathematicians of his time.