James Gregory | |
---|---|
![]() James Gregory (1638–1675) | |
Born | November 1638 Drumoak, Aberdeenshire, Scotland |
Died | October 1675 Edinburgh, Scotland | (aged 36)
Nationality | Scottish |
Citizenship | Scotland |
Alma mater | Marischal College, University of Aberdeen University of Padua |
Known for | Gregorian telescope Gregory coefficients Diffraction grating Fundamental theorem of the calculus Integral of the secant function |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Mathematics Astronomy |
Institutions | University of St. Andrews University of Edinburgh |
Notes | |
James Gregory FRS (November 1638 – October 1675) was a Scottish mathematician and astronomer. His surname is sometimes spelt as Gregorie, the original Scottish spelling. He described an early practical design for the reflecting telescope – the Gregorian telescope – and made advances in trigonometry, discovering infinite series representations for several trigonometric functions.
In his book Geometriae Pars Universalis (1668)[1] Gregory gave both the first published statement and proof of the fundamental theorem of the calculus (stated from a geometric point of view, and only for a special class of the curves considered by later versions of the theorem), for which he was acknowledged by Isaac Barrow.[2][3][4][5][6][7][8]