John Keill

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John Keill (born December 1, 1671 in Edinburgh , † August 31, 1721 in Oxford ) was a British mathematician and physicist. He was a professor at Oxford University and confidante of Isaac Newton , whom he defended in his priority dispute with Leibniz .

Life

Keill was the son of a lawyer in Edinburgh and studied mathematics and physics in particular at the University of Edinburgh with David Gregory with an MA in 1692. He then went with Gregory to Oxford, where he received a scholarship and in 1694 made his master's degree at Balliol College . He gave the first lectures on Newton's philosophy and physics at Oxford and became a lecturer in experimental philosophy , first in his chamber at Balliol College in 1694 and later at Hart Hall. This was the first such lecture at a British university with physical experiments; As the later publication shows, however, his lecture experiments were predominantly thought experiments. He published it in 1701 ( Introductio ad veram physicam ). In 1703 he moved to Christ Church College. In 1699 he became assistant to the Sedleian Professor of Natural Philosophy Thomas Millington (* 1628; † 1703/1704). But he did not take up this professorship when the chair became vacant in 1704, nor the Savilian professorship for astronomy after the death of Gregory in 1708. He therefore decided to switch to government service (supported by Robert Harley, later Earl of Oxford) and From 1709 she looked after refugees from the Electoral Palatinate who fled the devastation caused by the army of Louis XIV and accompanied a group on the voyage to New England. He returned in 1711 and worked as a cryptologist for the government of Queen Anne from 1712 to 1716 . In 1712 he became Savilian Professor of Astronomy at Oxford, which he remained until the end of his life. In 1713 he became a Doctor of Physic .

In 1700 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society .

He was a vehement defender of Newton in his priority dispute over the invention of calculus with Leibniz, whom he accused of plagiarism in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society . He also published the Commercium epistolicum , a collection of documents on the priority dispute that Newton was behind the publication. His writings served to popularize Newton and found an echo in continental Europe, as some of them were translated into French.

In 1715 he published an elementary geometry based on the first six books of Euclid, in which he also dealt with trigonometry and logarithms. In 1725 he published more of his physics lectures in Leiden.

In a book in 1698 he attacked speculative cosmogonies by Thomas Burnet and William Whiston , in which he sensed influences from "atheistic" Cartesianism and which he contrasted with the less speculative theories of Newton. He also attacked Richard Bentley in a similar manner . He was one of the few representatives of the Anglican High Church in the Newton area (an uncle of his was Bishop of Aberdeen). The attack on Burnet earned him the benevolence and patronage of Christ Church College's Dean Aldridge, who likely had a major impact on his becoming an assistant to Millington, elected to the Royal Society and Fellow of Christ Church, and later the Savilian Chair received.

In 1717 his marriage to a much younger woman below him caused a scandal in Oxford. Two years before his death, he inherited a substantial fortune from his brother, the anatomist and Iatromathematician James (1673-1719), who tried, with the help of John Keill, to apply physical methods to medicine.

Fonts

  • Introductio ad veram physicam, accedunt christiani Hugenii theoremata de vi centrifuga et motu circulari demonstrata , Oxford 1701 (attached with an attempt to derive the centrifugal force introduced by Christian Huygens )
    • English translation: An Introduction to Natural Philosophy, or Philosophical Lectures Read in the University of Oxford , London, 1720
  • An Examination of Dr Burnet ’s Theory of the Earth. Together with Some Remarks on Mr Whiston's New Theory of the Earth , Oxford, 1698 (in the 1734 edition with Dissertation on the Celestial Bodies by Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis )
  • An Examination of the Reflections on the Theory of the Earth. Together with Some Remarks on Mr Whiston's New Theory , Oxford, 1699 (answer to the defense of William Whiston and Thomas Burnet against his criticism)
  • Introductio ad veram astronomiam, selectiones astronomicae , Oxford, 1718
    • English translation: An Introduction to the True Astronomy; or, Astronomical Lectures , London 1721 (prepared at the request of the Duchess of Chandos and dedicated to her, also translated into French)
  • On the laws of Attraction and Other Principles of Physics , Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, No. 315 (1708), p. 97 (deals with short-range forces between small bodies)
  • Euclides elementorum libri priores sex , 1715

He also wrote a book with John Arbuthnot under the pen name Martin Strong, An Essay on the Usefulness of Mathematical Learning. In a Letter from a Gentleman in the City to His Friend at Oxford , London, 1701

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The MA was the basic degree at Edinburgh University, comparable to a Bachelor
  2. ^ English translation, An Introduction to Natural Philosophy, or Philosophical Lectures Read in the University of Oxford , London 1720. Also translated into French.
  3. ^ Richard Westfall in Galileo Project, see web links
  4. ↑ Ulrich Niewöhner-Desbordes: Keill, James. In: Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 731.
  5. ↑ David Kubrin in Dictionary of Scientific Biography
personal data
SURNAME Keill, John
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British mathematician and physicist
DATE OF BIRTH December 1, 1671
PLACE OF BIRTH Edinburgh
DATE OF DEATH August 31, 1721
Place of death Oxford