Robert Simson

Robert Simson

Opera quaedam reliqua , 1776

Robert Simson (born October 14, 1687 in West Kilbride , Ayrshire , † October 1, 1768 in Glasgow ) was a Scottish mathematician and geometer.

Life

Robert Simson began to study at the University of Glasgow in 1702 at the age of 14 , initially not mathematics, but theology, botany, oriental languages ​​and classical studies. When he wrote theological works during his studies, he disliked the often imprecise and speculative argumentation in this area. In search of a more precise method, he then began reading mathematical literature on the side, in particular the elements of Euclid . These sparked his interest in mathematics and he began to study it seriously.

When the mathematics professor Robert Sinclair retired in 1710, the University of Glasgow offered Robert Simson his chair. However, he did not want to accept the offer immediately, but first study in London with the mathematical greats of his time. After a year in England he returned to Glasgow in November 1711 and taught there as a professor of mathematics until his retirement in 1761. Colin Maclaurin and Matthew Stewart († 1785) were among his students in Glasgow .

Robert Simson was particularly concerned with the classical Greek mathematicians and published annotated editions of their works. In addition, he mostly worked on geometric issues. The Simson Straight , named after him, was wrongly attributed to him. Regardless of Giovanni Domenico Cassini , he discovered the named also after him Samson identity for Fibonacci numbers ( ), and further that the sequence of quotients of consecutive Fibonacci numbers against the golden ratio converges ( ). ${\displaystyle F_{n-1}\cdot F_{n+1}-F_{n}^{2}=(-1)^{n}}$ ${\displaystyle \lim _{n\rightarrow \infty }F_{n}/F_{n-1}={\frac {1+{\sqrt {5}}}{2}}=1.618...}$

As a mathematician, he published a study on the Porisms of Euclid (a lost work which he tried to reconstruct from information in Pappus of Alexandria ) in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in 1723 , and in 1749 his reconstruction of the lost book by Apollonios of Perge appeared Loci plani . He is also known for his Latin-English edition of the elements of Euclid (first in 1756 in Glasgow, many editions, even as late as 1933 by Isaac Todhunter ), which follows Federigo Commandino and includes books 1-6, 11 and 12. Its edition of the elements has long been the standard edition in Great Britain. Originally he was inspired by Edmond Halley to study the history of mathematics. He also published a textbook on conic sections, which was translated into German by Johann Wilhelm Camerer .

literature

• HSM Coxeter , SL Greitzer: Timeless geometry . Klett, Stuttgart 1983
• Charles Hutton : A philosophical and mathematical dictionary . Volume II. London 1815, pp. 395–398 ( excerpt from Google book search)
• Simson, Robert . In: Encyclopædia Britannica . 11th edition. tape 25 : Shuválov - Subliminal Self . London 1911, p. 137 (English, full text [ Wikisource ]).

Web links

• John J. O'Connor, Edmund F. Robertson :  Robert Simson. In: MacTutor History of Mathematics archive .
• GA Gibson: Biography of Robert Simson (English)