David Gregory

David Gregory, originally spelt Gregorie, who lived from 1659 to 1708, was a Scottish mathematician and astronomer and a proponent of Isaac Newton's Principia. The fourth of fifteen children of a doctor from Kinnairdy, he was born in Aberdeen, was a nephew of the astronomer and mathematician James Gregory, and studied at Marischal College before visiting the Netherlands, where he began medical studies at Leiden University, and France. He became Chair of Mathematics at the University of Edinburgh in 1683 and was among the first to openly teach the doctrines of the Principia in a public seminary. In 1691 he was elected Savilian Professor of Astronomy at Oxford, largely through Newton's influence, and in the same year a Fellow of the Royal Society. He published Catoptricae et dioptricae sphaericae elementa in 1695, discussed revisions of the Principia with Newton in 1694, and after the Union of 1707 was made responsible for reorganising the Scottish Mint.