Memoirs of the life of David Rittenhouse, LLD. F.R.S., late president of the American Philosophical Society, &c. : $b interspersed with various notices of many distinguished men : with an appendix, containing sundry philosophical and other papers, most of which have not hitherto been publishedBarton, William
History
Memoirs of the life of David Rittenhouse, LLD. F.R.S., late president of the American Philosophical Society, &c. : $b interspersed with various notices of many distinguished men : with an appendix, containing sundry philosophical and other papers, most of which have not hitherto been published
Besides these men of genius in the same family, was the late Dr. John
Gregory, professor of medicine in the University of Edinburgh; who had
previously held the philosophical chair in the University of St.
Andrews, from which he delivered lectures on the mathematics,
experimental philosophy, and moral philosophy. This gentleman was
grandson of the inventor of the Gregorian telescope, son of Dr. James
Gregory, professor of medicine at Aberdeen, and father of another
James, successor of Dr. Cullen, in the medical chair at Edinburgh.
A mathematical genius was hereditary in the family of the Andersons;
and, from them, it seems to have been transmitted to their descendants
of the name of Gregory. Alexander Anderson, cousin-german of David
abovementioned, was professor of mathematics at Paris, in the
beginning of the eighteenth century; and published there in 1712,
_Supplementum Apollonii redivivi_, &c. The mother of the James
Gregory, first named, inherited the genius of her family; and
observing in her son, while yet a child, a strong propensity to
mathematics, she herself instructed him in the elements of that
science.
Margaret, the mother of the late Dr. Thomas Reid, professor of moral
philosophy in the University of Glasgow, was a daughter of David
Gregory, Esq. of Kinnardie in Banffshire, elder brother of the James
Gregory first mentioned. It is remarked by a celebrated writer, that
“the hereditary worth and genius which have so long distinguished, and
which still distinguish, the descendants of this memorable family, are
well known to all who have turned their attention to Scottish
biography: but it is not known so generally, that in the female line,
the same characteristical endowments have been conspicuous in various
instances; and that to the other monuments which illustrate the race
of the Gregories, is to be added the philosophy of Reid.”—(See Dugald
Stewart’s _Account of the Life and Writings of Dr. Reid_.)
The great mathematical genius of the celebrated astronomer, John
Dominick Cassini, descended to his great-grandson. John-James, the son
of John-Dominick, who inherited the genius of his father, succeeded
him as professor of astronomy in the Royal Observatory at Paris, a
place which the father had filled more than forty years: John-James’s
son, Cæsar-Francis Cassini de Thury, (who died in the year 1784, at
the age of seventy years,) was an eminent astronomer: and his son, the
Count John-Dominick de Thury, was also a distinguished astronomer.
The eldest of these Cassini’s was a native of Italy, and born in 1625.
He died in the seventy-seventh year of his age; and in the year 1695,
a medal was struck to honour his memory, by order of the king of
France.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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