William Trail

William Trail, also spelled Traill, was a Scottish mathematician born in 1746 near Montrose, remembered chiefly for his mathematical textbooks. After studying at Marischal College in Aberdeen and under Robert Simson at the University of Glasgow, where he took his M.A. in 1766, he won the chair of mathematics at Marischal College the same year in a competition held before examiners from four universities, beating John Playfair and Robert Hamilton. In 1770 he published Elements of Algebra for the use of Students in Universities, which became a very popular book and ranged from first principles to equations of all orders with applications to physics and geometry. He resigned the chair in 1779 to become Chancellor of Down and Connor in the Church of Ireland, and in 1783 he was a founder member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He kept an interest in mathematics and in 1812 published a biography of Robert Simson, which gives first hand information about Simson and his geometrical studies even though it is not well regarded as biography. He retired to Bath and died there in 1831.