19 Facts About Edmund Stone

Edmund Stone is especially known for his translations of Nicholas Bion's Mathematical Instruments and the Marquis de l'Hospital's, and for his New Mathematical Dictionary.

The date and place of Edmund Stone's birth are unknown, as are the names of his parents, but he was probably born in Argyllshire, Scotland, at least a few years before 1700.

Edmund Stone never attended any formal school, but after being taught by a servant to read at age 18, he taught himself arithmetic, geometry, Latin, and French.

Edmund Stone published translations of the Marquis de l'Hospital's posthumous book about conic sections in 1720 and Christopher Clavius's translation of Theodosius's Spherics in 1721.

Edmund Stone translated Euclid's Elements ; l'Hospital's differential calculus book, to which he adjoined a second part about integral calculus, as The Method of Fluxions ; and Isaac Barrow's Geometrical Lectures.

In 1736 Edmund Stone submitted a paper to the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society about two cubic plane curves not cataloged by Isaac Newton or James Stirling, but unbeknownst to him the two had been previously published in 1731 by Francois Nicole and 1733 by Nicolaus Bernoulli, respectively.

In 1742 Edmund Stone submitted a 21-page paper "On Sir Isaac Newton's five diverging Parabolas", which was read to the Society but apparently never published.

In 1742, Edmund Stone resigned as a Fellow of the Royal Society, perhaps for inability to pay the small annual membership fee.

In 1766 Edmund Stone published a contrarian polemic contesting the scientific validity of the spherical shape of the Earth and suggesting contemporary evidence was insufficient to discount the possibility Earth is an irregular roundish polyhedron; biographers have suggested this book was the product of cognitive decline.

Mr Edmund Stone is a rare example: born son of the gardener to the Duke of Argyle, he reached the age of 18 years without knowing how to read; his father did not know how to teach him his trade in that elevated way, which makes gardening and agriculture a very useful and very noble part of cosmography and physics.

Edmund Stone applied himself, he studied, he arrived at the knowledge of the most sublime geometry, and of calculation, without master, without conductor, with no other guide than pure genius.

Edmund Stone called someone to pick it up and return it to the library.

Edmund Stone drew this marvelous genius from obscurity; and he provided him with a job that left him all the time to apply himself to the sciences.

Edmund Stone discovered in him the same genius for music, for painting, for architecture, for all the sciences that depend on calculation and proportions.

Edmund Stone now recognizes his own knowledge: but he is not inflated.

Edmund Stone is possessed of a pure and disinterested love for geometry.

Edmund Stone despises fortune, and has asked me twenty times to entreat milord to give him a lesser job, worth only half the one he has, in order to have more time alone, less distracted from his favorite studies.

Edmund Stone sometimes discovers, by his own methods, the same truths that others have already found.

Edmund Stone is charmed to see that he is not their inventor, and that men have made more progress than he had supposed.