David Gregory

David Gregory was a Scottish mathematician and astronomer, born in Aberdeen on 3 June 1659 and dead at Maidenhead on 10 October 1708. A nephew of James Gregory, he studied at Marischal College in Aberdeen, spent years on the continent, and in 1683 became professor of mathematics at the University of Edinburgh, where he was among the first to teach the doctrines of Newton's Principia in a public seminary. Through Newton's influence he became Savilian Professor of Astronomy at Oxford in 1691, the year he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and in 1694 he spent several days with Newton discussing a second edition of the Principia. In 1695 he published Catoptricae et dioptricae sphaericae elementa, on chromatic aberration and the possibility of an achromatic lens, and in 1703 he edited the works of Euclid. At the Union of 1707 he was given the task of reorganising the Scottish Mint.