Brook Taylor

(1685 – 1731)

Brook Taylor was born in Edmonton, Middlesex, England on August 18, 1685. His parents were descendants of the English aristocracy, and were well able to bear the expense of educating their obviously gifted son. Brook was tutored at home before leaving, at the age of sixteen, for St. John’s College at Cambridge University. He opted for the study of law and was awarded a bachelor’s degree in 1708; however, he simultaneously pursued his interest in mathematics.

Taylor investigated the center of oscillation, the motion of projectiles, and the principles of capillary attraction. With Sir Isaac Newton, he studied the laws of physics as applied to music. Taylor also developed the theory of perspective; his work in this area forms the mathematical basis of modern photogrammetry, the science of surveying using aerial photography. The results of his mathematical research were so impressive that in 1712, at the age of twenty-seven, Taylor was elected a member of the prestigious Royal Society.

In 1715, Taylor published the treatises that established his reputation as a mathematician of the highest caliber: Methodus incrementorum directa et inversa and Linear Perspective. Among the many discoveries elucidated in the Methodus incrementorum is an explanation of the process, now known as Taylor’s Theorem, of expanding functions into infinite series. These volumes were among his final contributions to mathematics; he abruptly abandoned the discipline in 1719, and turned instead to the study of theology and philosophy.

Taylor married twice, for the first time at the age of thirty-six. Both wives died in childbirth shortly after marriage, though the daughter of Taylor’s second wife survived. Taylor himself died on December 29, 1731, less than two years after the birth of his child. He was forty-six years old.

Links

http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Taylor.html
http://www.maths.tcd.ie/pub/HistMath/People/Taylor/RouseBall/RB_Taylor.html

References

• Ball, W. W. Rouse. A Short Account of the History of Mathematics. 1908. Reprint. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1960.
• Boyer, Carl B. A History of Mathematics. 2d ed., rev. Uta C. Merzbach. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1991.
• Eves, Howard. An Introduction to the History of Mathematics. 6th ed. Fort Worth: Saunders College Publishing, 1992.
• Gillispie, Charles Coulston, ed. Dictionary of Scientific Biography. Vol. XIII. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1976.