Brook Taylor - Forerunner of Differential Calculus.
On August 18 1685 English mathematician Brook Taylor was born. He is best known for Taylor's theorem and the Taylor series a method for expanding functions into infinite series. Brook Taylor was born in Edmonton to John Taylor of Bifrons House, Kent and Olivia Tempest in 1685 It was the year when King Charles II passed away and his Roman Catholic brother succeeded him as King James II of England the year of the Monmouth Rebellion led by James Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth illegitimate son of Charles II Newton about to publish his Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (and Leibniz's most important mathematical writings were about to be published. Brook Taylor grew up not only to be an accomplished musician and painter but he applied his mathematical skills to both these areas later in his life. He entered St John's College, Cambridge as a fellow-commoner in 1701 and took degrees of LL.B and LL.D in 1709 and 1714 respectively. Having studied mathematics in 1708 he obtained a remarkable solution of the problem of the "centre of oscillation," which, however, remained unpublished until May 1714 when his claim to priority was disputed by Johann Bernoulli. In 1712 Taylor elected to the Royal Society and acted as secretary to the society from 13 January 1714 to 21 October 1718 Clearly it was an election based more on the expertise which his tutors and others knew that Taylor had, rather than on his published results. Also in 1712 Taylor appointed to the committee set up to adjudicate on whether the claim of Newton of Leibniz to have invented the calculus was correct. Taylor's Methodus Incrementorum Directa et Inversa (added a new branch to higher mathematics now called the "calculus of finite differences". Among other ingenious applications, he used it to determine the form of movement of a vibrating string, by him first successfully reduced to mechanical principles. The same work contained the celebrated formula known as Taylor's formula the importance of which remained unrecognized until 1772 when J. L. Lagrange proclaimed it the basic principle of the differential calculus. Between 1712 and 1724 Taylor thirteen articles on topics as diverse as describing experiments in capillary action, magnetism and thermometers. He gave an account of an experiment to discover the law of magnetic attraction (and an improved method for approximating the roots of an equation by giving a new method for computing logarithms ( Taylor married twice. His marriage in 1721 with Miss Brydges of Wallington, Surrey, led to an estrangement from his father, which ended in 1723 after her death in giving birth to a son, who also died. In 1725 he married—this time with his father's approval—Sabetta Sawbridge of Olantigh, Kent, who also died in childbirth in 1730. However, his daughter, Elizabeth, survived. Taylor's fragile health gave way and he fell into a decline and died on 30 November 1731 aged 46. "As a mathematician he was the only Englishman, after Newton and Cotes capable of holding his own with the Bernoullis but a great part of the effect of his demonstrations was lost through his failure to express his ideas fully and clearly." . Learn more about Calculus in the lecture of MIT Prof. Dr. Gilbert Strang on 'Highlights of Calculus'.