Simson, ROBERT

Simson, ROBERT, was born in Ayrshire on the 14th October 1687. He was educated at the university of Glasgow with a view to entrance into the church, but, finding theology un congenial, he devoted himself to mathematics, and specially to geometry. In 1711 he was appointed professor of Mathematics in Glasgow, and he occupied this chair for the long period of half a century. One of the first subjects to which he turned his attention was the restoration of Euclid's lost treatise on Porisms. This had been previously attempted, but without success, owing to Pappus' meagre and obscure description of what a porism was. It is Simson's greatest achievement that he elucidated the nature of the ancient porisms, though his restoration of them is not complete. A specimen of his discovery was printed in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London in 1723, but his treatise on the subject did not appear till after his death. His Sectiones Conicee, in five books, was published in 1735; the first three books were afterwards translated into English, and have been repeatedly printed. His restoration of Apollonius' Plani Loci had been finished about 1738, but was not published till 1749. The work by which he is best known is his Elements of Euclid, which appeared both in Latin and English in 1756. It contained the first six books, the eleventh and twelfth, and was the basis of nearly all the editions published for more than 100 years afterwards. In 1761 he resigned his professorship, and occupied himself till his death, which took place on the 1st October 1768, in the arrangement and correction of his mathematical papers. His only publication after his retirement was a second edition of the Elements (1762), to which he annexed the book of Data. In 1776 a large volume, Roberti Simson Opera quaedam Reliqua, was printed at the expense of Earl Stanhope, one of Simson's intimate friends, and liberally distributed. It contains a restoration of Apollonius' two books De Sectione Determinata, with the addition of other two De Porismatibus, and two tracts on logarithms and the limits of quantities and ratios. See Memoir by the Rev. W. Trail (1812).