Abraham Robertson

Abraham Robertson (4 November 1751 to 4 December 1826) was a Scottish mathematician and astronomer who held the Savilian Chair of Geometry at the University of Oxford from 1797 to 1809. He was born at Duns in Berwickshire, the son of a man of humble station, and was schooled at Great Ryle in Northumberland and later at Duns. At twenty four he moved to London hoping to travel to the East Indies, but his patron died and the plan came to nothing. During the 1770s he completed his Bachelor and Master of Arts degrees. In 1792 he published Sectionum conicarum libri septem, a treatise on conic sections, and in 1795 the Royal Society elected him a fellow in recognition of his work on that subject.