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Description: | James Gregory (1638-75) was one of the most brilliant scientists of the 17th century. In Optica Promota (published 1663) he gave the first description of a reflecting telescope. Through a combination of lenses and mirrors, reflecting telescopes allowed greater magnification to be obtained with instruments of shorter length than was possible with refracting telescopes, which used lenses alone. Gregory is also credited, with Newton, Leibniz and Barrow, as a principal discoverer of the differential calculus. In 1668, when Charles II established a Chair of Mathematics at the University of St Andrews, Gregory was appointed as the first Professor.
Gregory planned to establish an observatory in St Andrews which, if completed, would have been the first in Britain. Correspondence between Gregory and John Flamsteed, later the first Astronomer Royal at Greenwich, records Gregory’s commissioning of three clocks - two regulator clocks and, more importantly, an early split seconds clock - from the renowned London maker, Joseph Knibb, in 1673: these remain within the University and are of undoubted national and international importance. Gregory is also thought to have acquired two of the finest extant Elizabethan scientific instruments: the Great Astrolabe and the Universal Instrument, dated 1575 and 1582 respectively, made by the important London maker Humphrey Cole.
Other material associated with Gregory includes an additional plate for the Great Astrolabe, produced by John Marke, London, in the 1670s, with a latitude close to that of St Andrews; a mariner’s astrolabe by Elias Allen, 1616, unusual in being one of the largest known examples, and also in being both signed and dated by its maker; a 17th century Dutch circumferentor; a rare sundial, an example of Oughtred’s double horizontal dial, produced by Hilkiah Bedford c. 1660-80; and a parchment refracting telescope of the mid-17th century believed to have been used by Gregory himself | Subjects: | SCIENTIFIC INSTRUMENTS ASTRONOMY GREGORY INSTRUMENT PHYSICS JAMES science NATURAL PHILOSOPHY | Source: | University of St Andrews | Address: | KY16 9AJ | Creator: | GREGORY, James | Contributor: | University of St Andrews | Identifier: | PH:C89 | Language: | en-GB | Relation: | MC:C48 |
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