Robert Simson
Robert Simson (14 October 1687 – 1 October 1768) was a Scottish mathematician and professor of mathematics at the University of Glasgow. The Simson line is named after him.[1]
The eldest son of John Simson of Kirktonhall, West Kilbride in Ayrshire, Robert Simson was intended for the Church, but the bent of his mind was towards mathematics. He was educated at the University of Glasgow and graduated M.A.
When the prospect opened of his succeeding to the mathematical chair at the University of Glasgow, Simson proceeded to London for further study. After a year in London, he returned to Glasgow and, in 1711, was appointed by the university to the professorship of mathematics, an office which he retained until 1761.[2]
Simson's contributions to mathematical knowledge took the form of critical editions and commentaries on the works of the ancient geometers.[2] The first of his published writings is a paper in the Philosophical Transactions (1723, vol. xl. p. 330) on Euclid's Porisms.
Then followed Sectionum conicarum libri V. (Edinburgh, 1735), a second edition of which, with additions, appeared in 1750. The first three books of this treatise were translated into English and, several times, printed as The Elements of the Conic Sections. In 1749, was published Apollonii Pergaei locorum planorum libri II., a restoration of Apollonius's lost treatise, founded on the lemmas given in the seventh book of Pappus's Mathematical Collection. This work is given mention by William Paley in his Natural Theology or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, published in 1804, a footnote in a later edition explaining who Simson was.
In 1756, appeared, both in Latin and in English, the first edition of his Euclid's Elements. This work, which contained only the first six and the eleventh and twelfth books, and to which, in its English version, he added the Data in 1762, was for long the standard text of Euclid in England.
