Brook Taylor

Brook Taylor, who lived from 1685 to 1731, was an English mathematician and barrister born in Edmonton, best known for results in mathematical analysis, above all Taylor's theorem and the Taylor series. He entered St John's College, Cambridge, in 1701 and took law degrees in 1709 and 1714 while studying mathematics under John Machin and John Keill, which led him to a solution of the problem of the center of oscillation whose priority Johann Bernoulli disputed. His Methodus Incrementorum Directa et Inversa of 1715 added the calculus of finite differences to higher mathematics, and he used it to determine the form of movement in vibrating strings; the same work contains the first satisfactory investigation of astronomical refraction and the theorem that Lagrange, in 1772, called the main foundation of differential calculus. His 1715 essay on linear perspective set out the principles of perspective in a more understandable form. Elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1712, he sat on the committee that judged the claims of Newton and Leibniz and served as the society's secretary from 1714 to 1718. A crater on the Moon bears his name, and he died in London in 1731 at the age of 46.