John Keill

John Keill (1671 to 1721) was a Scottish mathematician, natural philosopher and cryptographer who was an important defender of Isaac Newton. Born in Edinburgh, he studied at Edinburgh University under David Gregory, took a bachelor's degree in 1692 with distinction in physics and mathematics, and then an MA at Balliol College, Oxford in 1694. As a lecturer in experimental philosophy at Hart Hall he gave lectures and performed experiments based on Newton's findings, teaching the laws of motion, hydrostatics, optics and Newton's propositions on light and colours. He published an Examination of Dr. Burnet's Theory of the Earth in 1698 and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1700. In 1711 he became decypherer to Queen Anne, and in 1712 he returned to Oxford as Savilian Professor of Astronomy. In his later years he served as Newton's chief defender in the controversy over Leibniz and the invention of calculus.