20 Facts About Colin Maclaurin

Colin Maclaurin was a Scottish mathematician who made important contributions to geometry and algebra.

Colin Maclaurin is known for being a child prodigy and holding the record for being the youngest professor.

Colin Maclaurin was then educated under the care of his uncle, Daniel Maclaurin, minister of Kilfinan.

Colin Maclaurin graduated Master of Arts three years later by defending a thesis on the Power of Gravity, and remained at Glasgow to study divinity until he was 19, when he was elected professor of mathematics in a ten-day competition at Marischal College and University in Aberdeen.

Colin Maclaurin was admitted as a member of the Royal Society.

In 1725, Colin Maclaurin was appointed deputy to the mathematical professor at the University of Edinburgh, James Gregory, upon the recommendation of Isaac Newton.

Colin Maclaurin used Taylor series to characterize maxima, minima, and points of inflection for infinitely differentiable functions in his Treatise of Fluxions.

Colin Maclaurin attributed the series to Brook Taylor, though the series was known before to Newton and Gregory, and in special cases to Madhava of Sangamagrama in fourteenth century India.

Nevertheless, Colin Maclaurin received credit for his use of the series, and the Taylor series expanded around 0 is sometimes known as the Colin Maclaurin series.

Colin Maclaurin showed that an oblate spheroid was a possible equilibrium in Newton's theory of gravity.

Colin Maclaurin corresponded extensively with Clairaut, Maupertuis, and d'Ortous de Mairan.

Colin Maclaurin contributed to the study of elliptic integrals, reducing many intractable integrals to problems of finding arcs for hyperbolas.

Colin Maclaurin's work was continued by d'Alembert and Euler, who gave a more concise approach.

In 1733, Colin Maclaurin married Anne Stewart, the daughter of Walter Stewart, the Solicitor General for Scotland, by whom he had seven children.

Colin Maclaurin's eldest son John Maclaurin studied law, was a Senator of the College of Justice, and became Lord Dreghorn; he was joint founder of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Colin Maclaurin actively opposed the Jacobite rising of 1745 and superintended the operations necessary for the defence of Edinburgh against the Highland army.

Colin Maclaurin compiled a diary of his exertions against the Jacobites, both within and without the city.

On his journey south, Colin Maclaurin fell from his horse, and the fatigue, anxiety, and cold to which he was exposed on that occasion laid the foundations of dropsy.

The mathematician and former MIT President Richard Cockburn Colin Maclaurin was from the same family.

Colin Maclaurin was the name used for the new Mathematics and Actuarial Mathematics and Statistics Building at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh.