Colin Maclaurin

201
Colin Maclaurin bigraphy, stories - Mathematicians

Colin Maclaurin : biography

01 February 1698 – 14 June 1746

Colin Maclaurin (February 1698 – 14 June 1746) was a Scottish mathematician who made important contributions to geometry and algebra. The Maclaurin series, a special case of the Taylor series, is named after him.

Owing to changes in orthography since that time (his name was originally rendered as e.g. "M’Laurine". (Note that the quotation in has been altered.)), his surname is alternatively written MacLaurin.http://www.m-a.org.uk/docs/library/2064.pdf In Gaelic the name is "Cailean MacLabhruinn", which is literally ‘Colin, the son of Laurence.’http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Extras/Turnbull_Maclaurin_1.html Turnbull lectures on Colin Maclaurin (4 February 1947), Part I

Notable works

Some of his important works are:

  • Geometria Organica – 1720
  • De Linearum Geometricarum Proprietatibus – 1720
  • Treatise on Fluxions – 1742 (763 pages in two volumes. The first systematic exposition of Newton’s methods.)
  • Treatise on Algebra – 1748 (two years after his death.)
  • Account of Newton’s Discoveries – Incomplete upon his death and published in 1750 or 1748 (sources disagree)

Colin Maclaurin was the name used for the new Mathematics and Actuarial Mathematics and Statistics Building at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh.

Personal life

In 1733, Maclaurin married Anne Stewart, the daughter of Walter Stewart, the Solicitor General for Scotland, by whom he had seven children.

Maclaurin actively opposed the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745 and superintended the operations necessary for the defence of Edinburgh against the Highland army. Upon entry into the city, however, he fled to York, where he was invited to stay by the Archbishop of York.

On his journey south, Maclaurin fell from his horse, and the fatigue, anxiety, and cold to which he was exposed on that occasion laid the foundations of dropsy. He returned to Edinburgh after the Jacobite army marched south, but died soon after his return.

He is buried at Greyfriars Kirkyard, Edinburgh.

Mathematician and former MIT President Richard Cockburn Maclaurin was from the same family.

Sources

  • Anderson, William, The Scottish Nation, Edinburgh, 1867, vol.VII, p. 37.
  • Sageng, Erik, 2005, "A treatise on fluxions" in Grattan-Guinness, I., ed., Landmark Writings in Western Mathematics. Elsevier: 143-58.

Contributions to mathematics

Maclaurin used Taylor series to characterize maxima, minima, and points of inflection for infinitely differentiable functions in his Treatise of Fluxions. Maclaurin attributed the series to Taylor, though the series was known before to Newton and Gregory, and in special cases to Madhava of Sangamagrama in fourteenth century India. Nevertheless, Maclaurin received credit for his use of the series, and the Taylor series expanded around 0 is sometimes known as the Maclaurin series .

Maclaurin also made significant contributions to the gravitation attraction of ellipsoids, a subject that furthermore attracted the attention of d’Alembert, A.-C. Clairaut, Euler, Laplace, Legendre, Poisson and Gauss. Maclaurin showed that an oblate spheroid was a possible equilibrium in Newton’s theory of gravity. The subject continues to be of scientific interest, and Nobel Laureate Subramanyan Chandrasekhar dedicated a chapter of his book Ellipsoidal Figures of Equilibrium to Maclaurin spheroids.

Independently from Euler and using the same methods, Maclaurin discovered the Euler–Maclaurin formula. He used it to sum powers of arithmetic progressions, derive Stirling’s formula, and to derive the Newton-Cotes numerical integration formulas which includes Simpson’s rule as a special case.

Maclaurin contributed to the study of elliptic integrals, reducing many intractable integrals to problems of finding arcs for hyperbolas. His work was continued by d’Alembert and Euler, who gave a more concise approach.