16 Facts About John Playfair

John Playfair FRSE, FRS was a Church of Scotland minister, remembered as a scientist and mathematician, and a professor of natural philosophy at the University of Edinburgh.

John Playfair is best known for his book Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth, which summarised the work of James Hutton.

John Playfair was educated at home until the age of 14, when he entered the University of St Andrews to study divinity.

However, John Playfair chose to continue his studies in mathematics and physics, and in 1782 he resigned his charge to become the tutor of Adam Ferguson.

In 1785 when Dugald Stewart succeeded Ferguson in the University of Edinburgh Chair of Moral Philosophy, John Playfair succeeded the former to become the chair of mathematics.

In 1795 John Playfair published an alternative, more stringent formulation of Euclid's parallel postulate, which is called John Playfair's axiom.

In 1802 John Playfair published his celebrated volume entitled Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth.

John Playfair took a prominent part, on the liberal side, in the ecclesiastical controversy that arose in connection with Sir John Leslie's appointment to the post he had vacated, and published a satirical letter.

John Playfair moved from 6 Buccleuch Place to a new house at 2 Albany Street in 1807.

John Playfair was an opponent of Gottfried Leibniz's vis viva principle, an early version of the conservation of energy.

John Playfair died at 2 Albany Street on 20 July 1819.

John Playfair is buried nearby in Old Calton Burial Ground.

John Playfair's nephew, William Henry Playfair was an eminent architect in Scotland.

John Playfair turned him down and married Sir Humphry Davy.

John Playfair died of strangury on 20 July 1819, and, although an eminent man, was buried in an unmarked grave in Old Calton Burial Ground, on Waterloo Place in Edinburgh.

John Playfair took an interest in Indian astronomy and compared them with traditional and ancient astronomy from Egypt and Greece.