Benjamin Robins

Benjamin Robins (1707 to 29 July 1751) was a pioneering British scientist, Newtonian mathematician and military engineer. Born in Bath to poor Quaker parents, he received little formal education. He came to London on the advice of Henry Pemberton, supported himself for a time by teaching mathematics, and then devoted himself to engineering and fortification. His New Principles of Gunnery of 1742 described his ballistic pendulum and brought Newtonian science to military men for the first time. He experimented on the resistance of air to projectiles and on the force of gunpowder, compared theory with the measured ranges of mortars and cannon, observed rockets and argued for rifled gun barrels. Leonhard Euler translated the work into German with his own commentary, and it fed the later advance of Prussian artillery under Frederick the Great and stimulated the teaching of calculus in military academies.