John Craig (mathematician)

John Craig (* 1663 in Hoddam , Dumfries ; † October 11, 1731 in High Holborn , London ) was a Scottish mathematician and theologian . He was one of the first to take up the differential calculus by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (together with Jakob I Bernoulli and his brother Johann I Bernoulli ).

Craig was the son of a pastor and studied from 1684 in Edinburgh with the Magister Artium 1687. He was a student of David Gregory there . While still a student in Edinburgh, he went to Cambridge in 1685 and published a mathematical work there ( Methodus figurarum lineis rectis et curvis comprehensarum quadraturas determinandi ), in which the notation of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz is used for the derivation ( ) for the first time in England . He quotes the not very clear treatise by Leibniz ( Nova Methodus ) on differential calculus, which appeared in 1684 , even if he did not delve deeply into it. This was an occasion for Leibniz in 1686 to write a treatise for a more detailed explanation ( De geometria recondita et analysi indivisibilium atque infinitorum ). In a treatise by Craig from 1693 ( Tractatus mathematicus de figurarum curvilinearum quadraturis et locis geometricis ) the Leibniz integral symbol is used for the first time in England (it was accordingly praised by Leibniz in the Acta Eruditorum ). It also includes advances in the analytical geometry of conics . In 1689 he went to England, where he had various positions as a clergyman in the Anglican Church , so he was from 1692 Vicar in Potterne in Wiltshire and from 1696 in Gillingham Major . In 1708 he became canon of Salisbury Cathedral . In 1726 he was a clergyman in Gillingham and in the last years of his life he went to London in the hope of finding employment there as a mathematician. ${\displaystyle {\frac {dy}{dx}}}$

Craig taught math and took students into his home. He was on friendly terms with Isaac Newton , Edmond Halley and Abraham de Moivre and kept in touch with his teacher Gregory and with Scottish mathematicians such as Colin Maclaurin .

From 1697 to 1710 he published eight essays in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (including on the logarithmic spiral , the brachistochrone and area determination ). In 1711 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society. He led disputes with Jakob I. Bernoulli and Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus .

In 1699 he published a book ( Theologiae Christianae Principia Mathematica ) in which he established a probability formula for the decrease in the evidential value of the Gospels for the existence of Jesus and his message. According to him, the transmission of the message of the Gospels depended on the number of witnesses and those who spread it further. It decreased over time and finally reached zero, from which he derived an upper limit for the time of the Last Judgment (the year 3144). While this attempt was later mostly ridiculed, Stephen Stigler sees it as an underestimated contribution to probability theory (estimation of the probability of past events from later tradition using a logistic model).

In 1718 he published a book on optics ( Quibus subjunguntur libri duo de optica analytica ) using Newton's notation of analysis and not that of Leibniz.

literature

• JF Scott, article in Dictionary of Scientific Biography
• Andrew I. Dale, Article in Dictionary of National Biography , 2004
• R. Nash: John Craige's mathematical principles of Christian theology . 1991 (English).
• Stephen M. Stigler: John Craig and the probability of history. From the death of Christ to the birth of Laplace . In: Journal of the American Statistical Association . tape 81 , 1986, pp. 879-887 (English).

Web links

• John J. O'Connor, Edmund F. Robertson :  John Craig (mathematician). In: MacTutor History of Mathematics archive .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Thomas Sonar: The history of the priority dispute between Newton and Leibniz, Springer 2016, p. 245
2. ↑ Carl Boyer, History of Analytic Geometry, Dover 2004, p. 130