Difference between revisions of "Colin Maclaurin (1698-1746)"

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'''Colin Maclaurin (1698-1746)''' was Professor of Mathematics at Edinburgh University from 1725 to 1746.  
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[[File:Macl.jpg | border | 250 px | right | thumb | Colin Maclaurin (1698-1746), engraved by Samuel Freeman after Percey (early 19th century), [[Library|Edinburgh University Library]] (Dc.2.57/3)]]'''Colin Maclaurin (1698-1746)''' was Professor of [[Mathematics]] at Edinburgh University from 1725 to 1746.  
  
 
== Early Life ==
 
== Early Life ==
  
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Maclaurin was born in Kilmoden, Argyll, the third son of John MacLaurin (1658–1698), a Church of Scotland minister. After attending parish schools, he studied Classics and Mathematics at Glasgow University under Robert Simson (1687–1768). He graduated M.A. in 1713, after defending a thesis on gravity, which located its cause in Divine Will. At this point he began a correspondence with mathematician and natural philosopher Colin Campbell (1644–1726), sending him a number of mathematical papers. Maclaurin remained at Glasgow University for a further year reading Divinity, then continued his studies independently at his uncle Daniel Maclaurin's home in Kilfinan, Argyll. In 1717, aged just nineteen, he was appointed Professor of Mathematics at Marischal College, Aberdeen University.
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Maclaurin was born in Kilmoden, Argyll, the third son of John MacLaurin (1658–1698), a Church of Scotland minister. After attending parish schools, he studied Classics and Mathematics at Glasgow University under Robert Simson (1687–1768). He graduated M.A. in 1713, after defending a thesis on gravity, which located its cause in Divine Will. Maclaurin remained at Glasgow University for a further year reading Divinity, then continued his studies independently at his uncle Daniel Maclaurin's home in Kilfinan, Argyll. In 1717, aged just nineteen, he was appointed Professor of Mathematics at Marischal College, Aberdeen University.
  
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Maclaurin came to the attention of Isaac Newton's circle in London when he published two papers on the construction and mensuration of curves in 1718 and 1719. He was made a member of the Royal Society (1719) and often visited Newton. Under Newton's patronage, he published a full work on the description of curves, the hugely influential ''Geometria organica'' in 1720. In the preface, he argued that mathematics and mathematical relationships underlie nature itself. In the same year, Maclaurin published ''De linearum geometricarum proprietatibus'', in which he studies the curvature and harmonic properties of curves, and properties of their tangents and secant lines.  
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Maclaurin came to the attention of Isaac Newton (1643-1727) and his circle in London when he published two papers on the construction and mensuration of curves in 1718 and 1719. He was made a member of the Royal Society (1719) and often visited Newton. Under Newton's patronage, he published a full work on the description of curves, the hugely influential ''Geometria organica'' in 1720. In the preface, he argued that mathematics and mathematical relationships underlie nature itself. In the same year, Maclaurin published ''De linearum geometricarum proprietatibus'', in which he studied the curvature and harmonic properties of curves, and the properties of their tangents and secant lines.  
  
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In 1721, during a second trip to London, he was engaged by Lord Polworh as a tutor and travelling companion for his on. He spent three years in France, apparently without leave of absence from Aberdeen University. He  continued his mathematical research while abroad, winning a prize-contest organized by the Académie Royale des Sciences in Paris for the best essay on the percussion of bodies. His triumph was a considerable boost for Newtonian science in continental Europe. In 1724, Maclaurin's charge died in Montpellier, and he returned to his post at Aberdeen University. By November 1725, however, he had accepted a post at Edinburgh University as deputy for James Gregory who was too too infirm to carry out his teaching duties. There was some difficulty about funds for a second professor of mathematics, since Gregory was to retain the income from the professorship for the rest of his life, more or less as a pension. The appointment was apparently secured for MacLaurin by the intervention of Newton, who offered to pay £20 a year toward MacLaurin's salary if that would facilitate his appointment. MacLaurin had to pay Gregory a considerable sum for consenting to his appointment, and then Gregory failed to die as quickly as expected, surviving and depriving MacLaurin of the full salary until 1744.
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In 1721, he was engaged by Lord Polworth as a tutor and travelling companion for his son. He spent three years in France, continuing his mathematical research while abroad. He won a prize-contest organized by the Académie Royale des Sciences in Paris for the best essay on the percussion of bodies, a major European triumph for Newtonian science. After his ward died in Montpellier in 1724, Maclaurin briefly resumed his duties at Aberdeen University.  
  
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MacLaurin taught a three-year course from elementary to advanced mathematics, beginning with arithmetic and Euclid, and working up to the Principia and the method of fluxions. He also taught experimental philosophy, surveying, fortification, geography, theory of gunnery, astronomy, and optics. He wrote his A Treatise of Algebra at this time for use in his courses, although it did not appear in print until after his death. On its publication the Treatise became a popular textbook, going through many editions and remaining in use through the rest of the century.
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== Maclaurin at Edinburgh University ==
  
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In 1726 MacLaurin published ‘A letter … concerning equations with impossible roots’ in the Philosophical Transactions. In this paper he extended Newton's rules for determining the number of impossible, that is, complex roots of polynomial equations. George Campbell published a paper in the 1728 Philosophical Transactions carrying the same methods further than MacLaurin had done in 1726; Campbell's results seemed to grow directly out of MacLaurin's 1726 paper, or worse, to have been taken from MacLaurin's teaching at Edinburgh, where Campbell had been a private teacher at least since 1719. MacLaurin hastened to publish the continuation of his 1726 piece, ‘A second letter … concerning the roots of equations’, in the 1729 Philosophical Transactions, in which he delivered and proved several propositions that Campbell had given without proof in his paper, and several that went far beyond Campbell.
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[[File:IMG 1472.jpg | border | 250 px | right | thumb | From 'A Collection from Mr. MacLaurin's course of experiments', [[Library|Edinburgh University Library]] (Dc.7.73)]]In November 1725, Maclaurin accepted a post at Edinburgh University as joint Professor of [[Mathematics]]. He was effectively deputizing for [[James Gregory (1666-1742)]], who had held the Chair since 1692 and was now too ill to carry out his teaching duties. Gregory, however, would continue to draw a professorial salary until his death, and Maclaurin was only appointed after Isaac Newton offered to pay part of his remuneration. Maclaurin also had to pay Gregory a considerable sum for consenting to his appointment. Gregory then lived very much longer than expected, and Maclaurin was deprived of the full salary until his death in 1742.
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Defence of Newtonian philosophy
 
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Some time after Newton died in 1727 John Conduitt asked MacLaurin to collaborate in the writing of his biography; the project lost momentum with Conduitt's death in 1737 but MacLaurin continued with his part in it and the work was published posthumously in 1748 as An Account of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophical Discoveries. MacLaurin discusses Newton's method of investigation and of ‘philosophizing’, as well as his discoveries, and begins with a long history of natural philosophy since the ancients, in which he again asserts the importance for religion of sound natural philosophy. Though a number of other general expositions of Newton's thought were published during the eighteenth century, MacLaurin's Account has long been recognized as the leading authoritative statement of mainstream Newtonianism. As with his prize-winning Treatise on Percussion of 1724, one of the priorities of his Account was to combat the rival natural philosophy promulgated by the followers of Leibniz.
 
  
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On 18 July 1733 MacLaurin married Anne Stewart, the daughter of the late solicitor general for Scotland, Walter Stewart. They had seven children, four daughters and three sons; two of them, Barbara and Walter, died in 1739, but John MacLaurin (later Lord Dreghorn), Colin, and three daughters survived their father.
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Besides giving a three-year course from elementary to advanced mathematics, Maclaurin's classes at Edinburgh also covered experimental philosophy, surveying, fortification, geography, theory of gunnery, astronomy, and optics. His pupil [[Alexander Carlyle (1722-1805)]] recalls that:
  
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In the same year William Braikenridge published Exercitatio geometrica de descriptione linearum curvarum, and in the January–March 1735 issue of the Philosophical Transactions, a continuation under the title, ‘A general method of describing curves, by the intersection of right-lines; moving about points in a given plane’. Exercitatio geometrica contained what has come to be called the Braikenridge–MacLaurin theorem. The Philosophical Transactions article treats the construction of cubics and quartics along the lines pursued by MacLaurin in his Geometria organica. These publications gave rise to a priority dispute and to charges of plagiarism, both apparently originated by Braikenridge. MacLaurin responded by publishing a paper dated 27 November 1722, which he declared he had written while en route for Cambrai. This paper contains the Braikenridge–MacLaurin theorem, and carries its generalization much further than Braikenridge had done. MacLaurin's theorem contains Pascal's theorem on a hexagon inscribed in a conic as a special case.
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<blockquote>Mr M'Laurin was at this time a favourite professor, and no wonder, as he was the clearest and most agreeable
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lecturer on that abstract science that ever I heard. He made mathematics a fashionable study, which was felt afterwards in the war that followed in 1743, when nine-tenths of the engineers of the army were Scottish officers.</blockquote>
  
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MacLaurin was one of two co-secretaries of the Edinburgh Philosophical Society on its foundation in 1737. It was originally the Edinburgh Society for Improving Medical Knowledge, but on MacLaurin's urging the plan was expanded to include natural philosophy and antiquities, and it became the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1783.
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[[Sir Alexander Grant (1826-1884)]], Edinburgh University's most authoritative historian, describes Maclaurin as the 'life and soul' of the university, a man of 'remarkable social qualities', and a prominent figure in the capital's scientific circles. Besides his academic achievements, he was instrumental in persuading Parliament to establish a Ministers' and Professors' Widows' Fund for Scotland.
  
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In 1734 George Berkeley had published The Analyst, or, A Discourse Addressed to an Infidel Mathematician, wherein it is Examined whether the Object, Principles, and Inferences of the Modern Analysis are More Distinctly Conceived, or More Evidently Deduced, than Religious Mysteries and Points of Faith. The main point of Berkeley's pamphlet was that it is wrong for freethinkers to complain of the incomprehensibility of religion, and to throw up mathematics as the model of right reasoning, since mathematical doctrines are also incomprehensible and, not being susceptible of rigorous demonstration, are accepted on faith. As an example, Berkeley fixed on ‘the modern analysis’, that is, the Newtonian method of fluxions and the Leibnizian differential and integral calculus. Besides objecting to particular demonstrations and procedures, Berkeley's criticism of the method of fluxions amounted to the well-substantiated assertion that it was founded inescapably either on infinitesimals or on a shifting of hypotheses, both of which were logically indefensible.
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== Maclaurin and the '45 ==
  
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MacLaurin's magnum opus, the Treatise of Fluxions, published in 1742, was begun as a response to Berkeley's Analyst. MacLaurin founded the method of fluxions on a limit concept drawn from the method of exhaustions in classical geometry, avoiding the use of infinitesimals, infinite processes, and actually infinite quantities, and avoiding any shifting of the hypothesis. In addition, he went on in this treatise of over 760 pages to demonstrate that the method so founded would support the entire received structure of fluxions and the calculus, and could deal effectively with all of the challenge problems then being exchanged between British and continental mathematicians.
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In September 1745, as Charles Edward Stuart army advanced upon Edinburgh, Maclaurin volunteered his services as a military engineer to fortify the city walls. When Edinburgh capitulated on 16 September, Maclaurin refused to submit to the Jacobite government, and fled to England, where he took refuge with Thomas Herring, Archbishop of York. He returned to Edinburgh after the Jacobites' departure in November, but caught a severe cold while travelling across snowbound countryside. His health, already undermined by his exertions in fortifying the city, never fully recovered.(See [[The University and the '45]] for more details.)
  
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MacLaurin's response to Berkeley was informed by his belief that mathematics, properly understood, is necessarily based on real, actually existent entities, which belief made it impossible for MacLaurin—as for Berkeley—to accept a system based on infinitesimals, and by his ideas about the role of mathematics in religion, both directly, as ‘the surest bulwark against the skeptics’ (letters, Aberdeen University, MS 206), and by way of natural philosophy, the ultimate purpose of which is to support natural religion. These ideas led MacLaurin both to emphasize the importance of sound foundations in such a vital enterprise, and to be offended by the suggestion that mathematics is dangerous to religion, or that mathematicians are liable to lead men to infidelity. He stresses the value of the methods of the ancients, especially their insistence on deduction from clear and distinct principles. He describes geometry's fall from grace with the introduction of indivisibles and infinitesimals—an introduction of mysteries into a science where there should be none—and its salvation at the hands of Newton, who placed these systems on a sound basis with the method of fluxions.
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Maclurin continued to dictate the last chapters of his biography of Newton on his death bed. He was tended in his final illness by [[Alexander Monro ''primus'' (1697-1767)]], the first Professor of [[Anatomy]] at Edinburgh University (1720-64) and founder of Edinburgh Medical School. At the first meeting of the [[Senatus Academicus]] after the reopening of Edinburgh University, Monro read two orations in praise of his late friend, remarking that:
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The Jacobite rising and death
 
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MacLaurin took a leading role in preparing the defence of Edinburgh against the highland army of Prince Charles Edward Stuart in the Jacobite rebellion of 1745. MacLaurin was supervising the loading of cannon on 16 September when he heard the news that ‘a packed meeting’ (Collected Letters, 126) (the volunteers, organized to defend the city, were all out manning the walls) had voted to capitulate. When Edinburgh was occupied MacLaurin fled south into England where he was invited to stay with Thomas Herring, a zealous whig and the archbishop of York. He returned to Edinburgh on 16 November, after the Jacobites' departure, having travelled for three days from York. It is generally reported that MacLaurin arrived back in Edinburgh mortally ill, after a difficult journey both ways on horseback, including a fall and exposure to unpleasant weather. He was, however, able to return to his duties, although, as he reports in a letter of 9 December, he had caught ‘the most dangerous cold’ (Collected Letters, 132) he had ever had, from which, he said, he was then recovering. He apparently did not recover entirely, and a dropsy of the belly was diagnosed, but resisted treatment; he died on 14 June 1746. He continued to dictate the concluding chapter of his Account of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophical Discoveries, ‘Of the supreme author and governor of the universe, the true and living God’, until a few hours before his death, and he remained the natural philosopher to the end, asking his friend and eulogist, the anatomy professor Alexander Monro, to account for various phenomena he experienced as his body failed.
 
  
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MacLaurin was buried in Greyfriars churchyard, Edinburgh; his tombstone is set in the exterior south wall of the church. His wife and family were left financially insecure, and put Patrick Murdoch in charge of editing MacLaurin's writings, which resulted in the appearance in 1748 of the Account of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophical Discoveries and A Treatise of Algebra, the former published ‘for the author's children’ with a large subscription.
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<blockquote>acute parts and extensive learning were in Mr. M'Laurin but secondary qualities; and that he was still more nobly distinguished from the bulk of mankind by the qualities of his heart, his sincere love to God and men, his universal benevolence and unaffected piety, — together with a warmth and constancy in his friendships that was in a manner peculiar to himself</blockquote>
  
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Erik Lars Sageng
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== Research and Publications ==
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Sources 
 
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P. Murdoch, ‘An account of the life and writings of the author’, in C. Maclaurin, An account of Sir Isaac Newton's philosophical discoveries, ed. P. Murdoch (1748); repr. with introduction and index of names by L. L. Laundan (1968) [repr. 1968] • C. Tweedie, ‘A study of the life and writings of Colin MacLaurin’, Mathematical Gazette, 8 (1915–16), 133–51; 9 (1917–19), 303–6; 10 (1920–21), 209 • H. W. Turnbull, Bicentenary of the death of Colin Maclaurin (1951) • C. MacLaurin, ‘Journall of what pass'd relating to the defence of Edinburgh from the monday September 2d till monday September 16’, NL Scot., MS 1342 • C. MacLaurin, letters, 1720–43, and journal, 1722–4, U. Aberdeen L., MS 206 • The collected letters of Colin MacLaurin, ed. S. Mills (1982) • ‘A short account of the University of Edinburgh, the present professors in it, and the several parts of learning taught by them’, Scots Magazine, 3 (1741), 371–4 • marriage contract, Dalry office, register of deeds, 1 July–31 Dec 1746, vol. 160
 
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Archives 
 
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BL, papers relating to spheroids and Nugae Poeticae, Add. MSS 4437, 52247 • NL Scot., journals and letters • RS, papers • U. Aberdeen L., MSS and letters • U. Edin. L., special collections division, lecture notes and papers • U. Glas. L., notebooks and letters |  NA Scot., letters to Sir John Clerk • NRA, priv. coll., letters to James Stirling • U. Glas. L., special collections department, papers relating to projected biography by J. C. Eaton • U. Glas. L., special collections department, letters to James Spreull, etc. [copies]
 
  
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Mathematical career
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[[File:IMG 1476.jpg | border | 250 px | right | thumb | Early MS of ''A Treatise of Algebra'' by [[Colin Maclaurin (1698-1746)]], in hand of unidentified amanuensis, [[Library|Edinburgh University Library]] (Gen.75D)]]Maclaurin wrote ''A Treatise of Algebra'' for use in his classes, which was posthumously published and became a popular textbook for the rest of century. After Newton died in 1727 Jon Conduitt (1688-1737) asked Maclaurin to collaborate in the writing of his biography. Conduitt died in 1727, but Maclaurin completed the work on his own. An Account of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophical Discoveries, posthumously published in 1748, has long been recognized as the most authoritative statement of mainstream Newtonianism. At the same time he was working on his magnum opus, ''The Treatise of Fluxions'' (1742), which rests on his faith in Newtonian methodology.
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Colin MacLaurin was a younger contemporary, and to some extent a protégé of Isaac Newton, and he wrote the first thorough, systematic, axiomatic development of the method of fluxions, the Newtonian version of the calculus. However, his relative isolation in Scotland—and his heavy teaching duties, about which he persistently complained—denied him the fame commensurate with his stature.  
 
  
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In 1714 MacLaurin sent Campbell several mathematical papers, in one of which he provided fluxional demonstrations to a number of propositions from the Principia, and another entitled De viribus mentium bonipetis. In this latter paper, MacLaurin applied the method of fluxions to the analysis of the forces with which our minds are attracted to various goods, in a manner analogous to the mathematical analysis of celestial mechanics.
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== Archives ==
  
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== Alexander 'Jupiter' Carlyle on MacLaurin ==
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*[[Lectures and Correspondence of Professor Colin Maclaurin]]
  
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<blockquote>Mr M'Laurin was at this time a favourite professor, and no wonder, as he was the clearest and most agreeable
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== Sources ==
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lecturer on that abstract science that ever I heard. He made mathematics a fashionable study, which was felt afterwards in the war that followed in 1743, when nine-tenths of the engineers of the army were Scottish officers.</blockquote>
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*[[Alexander Carlyle (1722-1805)|Alexander Carlyle]], ''Autobiography of the Rev. Dr. Alexander Carlyle, Minister of Inveresk: Containing Memorials of the Men and Events of his Time'' (Edinburgh: W. Blackwood, 1860)
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*[[Andrew Dalzel]], ''History of the University of Edinburgh from its Foundation'', 2 vols (Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas, 1862)
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*[[Sir Alexander Grant]], ''The Story of the University of Edinburgh during its First Three Hundred Years'', 2 vols (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1884)
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*[[John Home (1722-1808)|John Home]], ''The History of the Rebellion in the Year 1745'' (London: T. Cadell, Jun. and W. Davies, 1802)
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*David Bayne Horn, ''A Short History of the University of Edinburgh, 1556-1889'' (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1967) 
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*Colin MacLaurin, ''The Collected Letters of Colin MacLaurin'', ed. Stella Mills (Nantwich: Shiva, 1982)
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*Patrick Murdoch, 'An account of the Life and Writings of the Author', in Colin Maclaurin, ''An Account of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophical Discoveries'' (London: A. Millar and J. Nourse, 1748)
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*Nicholas Phillipson, 'The Making of an Enlightened University', in Robert D. Anderson, Michael Lynch, and Nicholas Phillipson, ''The University of Edinburgh: An Illustrated History'' (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2003), pp. 51-102.
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*Erik Lars Sageng, 'MacLaurin, Colin (1698–1746)', ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) [[http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/17643], accessed 12 June 2014]
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[[Category:Academics|Maclaurin, Colin]]

Latest revision as of 16:44, 4 August 2014

Colin Maclaurin (1698-1746), engraved by Samuel Freeman after Percey (early 19th century), Edinburgh University Library (Dc.2.57/3)

Colin Maclaurin (1698-1746) was Professor of Mathematics at Edinburgh University from 1725 to 1746.

Early Life

Maclaurin was born in Kilmoden, Argyll, the third son of John MacLaurin (1658–1698), a Church of Scotland minister. After attending parish schools, he studied Classics and Mathematics at Glasgow University under Robert Simson (1687–1768). He graduated M.A. in 1713, after defending a thesis on gravity, which located its cause in Divine Will. Maclaurin remained at Glasgow University for a further year reading Divinity, then continued his studies independently at his uncle Daniel Maclaurin's home in Kilfinan, Argyll. In 1717, aged just nineteen, he was appointed Professor of Mathematics at Marischal College, Aberdeen University.

Maclaurin came to the attention of Isaac Newton (1643-1727) and his circle in London when he published two papers on the construction and mensuration of curves in 1718 and 1719. He was made a member of the Royal Society (1719) and often visited Newton. Under Newton's patronage, he published a full work on the description of curves, the hugely influential Geometria organica in 1720. In the preface, he argued that mathematics and mathematical relationships underlie nature itself. In the same year, Maclaurin published De linearum geometricarum proprietatibus, in which he studied the curvature and harmonic properties of curves, and the properties of their tangents and secant lines.

In 1721, he was engaged by Lord Polworth as a tutor and travelling companion for his son. He spent three years in France, continuing his mathematical research while abroad. He won a prize-contest organized by the Académie Royale des Sciences in Paris for the best essay on the percussion of bodies, a major European triumph for Newtonian science. After his ward died in Montpellier in 1724, Maclaurin briefly resumed his duties at Aberdeen University.

Maclaurin at Edinburgh University

From 'A Collection from Mr. MacLaurin's course of experiments', Edinburgh University Library (Dc.7.73)

In November 1725, Maclaurin accepted a post at Edinburgh University as joint Professor of Mathematics. He was effectively deputizing for James Gregory (1666-1742), who had held the Chair since 1692 and was now too ill to carry out his teaching duties. Gregory, however, would continue to draw a professorial salary until his death, and Maclaurin was only appointed after Isaac Newton offered to pay part of his remuneration. Maclaurin also had to pay Gregory a considerable sum for consenting to his appointment. Gregory then lived very much longer than expected, and Maclaurin was deprived of the full salary until his death in 1742.

Besides giving a three-year course from elementary to advanced mathematics, Maclaurin's classes at Edinburgh also covered experimental philosophy, surveying, fortification, geography, theory of gunnery, astronomy, and optics. His pupil Alexander Carlyle (1722-1805) recalls that:

Mr M'Laurin was at this time a favourite professor, and no wonder, as he was the clearest and most agreeable lecturer on that abstract science that ever I heard. He made mathematics a fashionable study, which was felt afterwards in the war that followed in 1743, when nine-tenths of the engineers of the army were Scottish officers.

Sir Alexander Grant (1826-1884), Edinburgh University's most authoritative historian, describes Maclaurin as the 'life and soul' of the university, a man of 'remarkable social qualities', and a prominent figure in the capital's scientific circles. Besides his academic achievements, he was instrumental in persuading Parliament to establish a Ministers' and Professors' Widows' Fund for Scotland.

Maclaurin and the '45

In September 1745, as Charles Edward Stuart army advanced upon Edinburgh, Maclaurin volunteered his services as a military engineer to fortify the city walls. When Edinburgh capitulated on 16 September, Maclaurin refused to submit to the Jacobite government, and fled to England, where he took refuge with Thomas Herring, Archbishop of York. He returned to Edinburgh after the Jacobites' departure in November, but caught a severe cold while travelling across snowbound countryside. His health, already undermined by his exertions in fortifying the city, never fully recovered.(See The University and the '45 for more details.)

Maclurin continued to dictate the last chapters of his biography of Newton on his death bed. He was tended in his final illness by Alexander Monro ''primus'' (1697-1767), the first Professor of Anatomy at Edinburgh University (1720-64) and founder of Edinburgh Medical School. At the first meeting of the Senatus Academicus after the reopening of Edinburgh University, Monro read two orations in praise of his late friend, remarking that:

acute parts and extensive learning were in Mr. M'Laurin but secondary qualities; and that he was still more nobly distinguished from the bulk of mankind by the qualities of his heart, his sincere love to God and men, his universal benevolence and unaffected piety, — together with a warmth and constancy in his friendships that was in a manner peculiar to himself

Research and Publications

Early MS of A Treatise of Algebra by Colin Maclaurin (1698-1746), in hand of unidentified amanuensis, Edinburgh University Library (Gen.75D)

Maclaurin wrote A Treatise of Algebra for use in his classes, which was posthumously published and became a popular textbook for the rest of century. After Newton died in 1727 Jon Conduitt (1688-1737) asked Maclaurin to collaborate in the writing of his biography. Conduitt died in 1727, but Maclaurin completed the work on his own. An Account of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophical Discoveries, posthumously published in 1748, has long been recognized as the most authoritative statement of mainstream Newtonianism. At the same time he was working on his magnum opus, The Treatise of Fluxions (1742), which rests on his faith in Newtonian methodology.

Archives

Sources

  • Alexander Carlyle, Autobiography of the Rev. Dr. Alexander Carlyle, Minister of Inveresk: Containing Memorials of the Men and Events of his Time (Edinburgh: W. Blackwood, 1860)
  • Andrew Dalzel, History of the University of Edinburgh from its Foundation, 2 vols (Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas, 1862)
  • Sir Alexander Grant, The Story of the University of Edinburgh during its First Three Hundred Years, 2 vols (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1884)
  • John Home, The History of the Rebellion in the Year 1745 (London: T. Cadell, Jun. and W. Davies, 1802)
  • David Bayne Horn, A Short History of the University of Edinburgh, 1556-1889 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1967)
  • Colin MacLaurin, The Collected Letters of Colin MacLaurin, ed. Stella Mills (Nantwich: Shiva, 1982)
  • Patrick Murdoch, 'An account of the Life and Writings of the Author', in Colin Maclaurin, An Account of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophical Discoveries (London: A. Millar and J. Nourse, 1748)
  • Nicholas Phillipson, 'The Making of an Enlightened University', in Robert D. Anderson, Michael Lynch, and Nicholas Phillipson, The University of Edinburgh: An Illustrated History (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2003), pp. 51-102.
  • Erik Lars Sageng, 'MacLaurin, Colin (1698–1746)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) [[1], accessed 12 June 2014]
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