Background
David Gregory was born on June 3, 1659, in Aberdeen, Scotland. He was the fourth of the fifteen children of David Gregorie, a doctor from Kinnairdy, Banffshire, and Jean Walker of Orchiston.
Aberdeen Grammar School, Skene St, Aberdeen AB10 1HT, United Kingdom
David studied at Aberdeen Grammar School.
Marischal College, Broad St, Aberdeen AB10 1AB, United Kingdom
David studied at Marischal College (University of Aberdeen).
University of Edinburgh, Old College, South Bridge, Edinburgh EH8 9YL, United Kingdom
On 28 November 1683, Gregory received a Master of Arts at University of Edinburgh.
United Kingdom
In November 1692 Gregory was elected a fellow of the Royal Society.
Astronomer educator mathematician scientist writer
David Gregory was born on June 3, 1659, in Aberdeen, Scotland. He was the fourth of the fifteen children of David Gregorie, a doctor from Kinnairdy, Banffshire, and Jean Walker of Orchiston.
David studied at Aberdeen Grammar School and Marischal College (University of Aberdeen), from 1671 to 1675. On 28 November 1683, Gregory received a Master of Arts at University of Edinburgh.
In October 1683 Gregory became Chair of Mathematics at the University of Edinburgh. He was the first to openly teach the doctrines of Newton's Principia. In those days this was a daring innovation. Increasingly under attack by his fellow professors at Edinburgh for his radical views, Gregory jeopardized his position in 1690 by refusing to swear the required oath of loyalty to the English throne before a visiting parliamentary commission. In 1691, he was elected Savilian Professor of Astronomy at the University of Oxford, due in large part to the influence of Isaac Newton.
During his early years at Oxford, Gregory traveled widely to keep abreast of current developments in science, visiting Johann Hudde and Christian Huygens in Holland in May-June 1693 and Newton at Cambridge in May 1694 and on numerous later occasions in London. His extant Savilian lectures are for the most part a rehash of his Edinburgh lections.
Gregory's earliest publication, Exercitatio geometrica de dimensione figurarum, was a presentation of a number of manuscript adversaria bequeathed to him by his uncle James. His Treatise of Practical Geometry and Catoptricae et dioptricae sphaericae elementa are printed versions of elementary lectures given at Edinburgh in the 1680’s. His thick folio text on foundations of astronomy, Astronomiae elementa is a well-documented but unimaginative attempt to graft the gravitational synthesis propounded in the first book and especially the third book of Newton’s Principia onto the findings of traditional astronomy.
Gregory’s first collected edition of Euclidis quae supersunt omnia is a competent gathering of the mathematical and physical writings attributed to Euclid of Alexandria, but the one exciting passage in the preface again stems from Newton.
In his scientific views Gregory was a strong proponent of Isaac Newton's Principia.
In November 1692 Gregory was elected a fellow of the Royal Society.
Gregory and his wife, Elizabeth Oliphant, had nine children, but seven died while still children.