Gibson: History of Scottish Mathematics

In 1927 the Edinburgh Mathematical Society began to publish Series 2 of the Proceedings of the Edinburgh Mathematical Society. The first paper in the new Series was by George Gibson and it was the first part of his two-part paper Sketch of the History of Mathematics in Scotland to the end of the 18th Century. The first part occupied the first 17 pages of Volume I, Part I issued in May 1927. The second part of his paper occupied pages 71 to 93 of Volume I, and was issued as the first paper in Part II. We present a version of the paper below. We have broken the paper into smaller parts for convenience of presenting it in our archive but this is a somewhat arbitrary division and certainly was not intended by Gibson.

1. Gibson History 1 - Introduction
2. Gibson History 2 - Mathematics in the schools
3. Gibson History 3 - Founding of the Universities
4. Gibson History 4 - John Napier
5. Gibson History 5 - James Gregory
6. Gibson History 6 - More Gregorys
7. Gibson History 7 - Robert Simson
8. Gibson History 8 - James Stirling
9. Gibson History 9 - Colin Maclaurin
10. Gibson History 10 - Matthew Stewart, John Stewart, William Trail
11. Gibson History 11 - John Playfair, Sir John Leslie
12. Gibson History 12 - Minor figures, Arithmetic Books
13. Gibson History 13 - Postscript

Last Updated April 2007