James Gregory

James Gregory is described as "the greatest scientist associated it St. Andrews". Gregory contributed many diverse consepts and helped spread the new teachings of his time.

CHILDHOOD & EDUCATION

James Gregory was born in a small town just outside of Aberdeen, called Drmoak, Scotland. When he was little James suffered from quartan fever for a year and a half. Because of the fever he was afflicted with fevers in 72 hour intervals. His mother introduced basic math and geometry at a very young age. Gregory was home schooled until

his fater, a wealthy minister, died when James was about 13 years old. After his father died, his older brother, David, sent him to grammar school in Aberdeed. After finishing grammar school James attended Marischal College, Aberdeen University.

MAJOR ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Shortly after college he began to study optics and the construction of telescopes, and wrote his first book, Optica Promota ^1. In 1663 James went to London where he published Optica Promota, which discussed topics such as lenses, mirrors, reflection and refraction, paralax and transits. Optica Promota also discussed Gregory's most famous invention, the reflective telescope. It later became known and the Gregorian Telescope. However, at the time the telescope was only discussed because the mirror polishers could not polish the mirrors properly, so it was never auctually made until

after Gregory's death. He laso invented the feflective burning mirror. In 1664 James went to Puda, Italy and studied under Stefano degli Angeli in geometry, mechanics, and astronomy. While he was there, the published two more worksVera circuli et hyperbolae in which James showed how to compute logarithms by finding the areas of inscribed parallelograms between a hyperbola and its asymptotes, thus leading to the term "hyperbolic logarithms" in 1667. ^2 And Geometriae para universalis where he attempted to prove that the (little shape thingy that i cannot

type ...looks like a n mixed with pi) and e are transcendual, unfortunatly, his arguments contained a subtle error which was published in 1668, right before he left Italy for London.

In 1668, he was elected as a member of the Royal Society of London. James was appointed the chair professor of mathematics at the University of St. Andrewsin 1669 where he greatly improved the mathematics department. He bought instruments such as clocks, astrolabes, and an armillary spere, he also planned an observatory. However, the masters of the university began to dislike Gregory's new teachings. Controversy rocked the mathematics department as they kept students from attending his classes