SCIENTISTS OF THE NORTH-EAST OF SCOTLAND 117 
with reference to those who accuse him of plagiarising from Vieta ‘ that 
it is not the part of a peaceful mind to seek praise for itself by injuring 
the name of others . . . and if any praise comes to me from this, and if 
you think that it has been taken from you, you should attempt to restore 
the loss, if you can do anything worthy of the light.’ He is here addressing 
those who ‘ earnestly pursue the study of Mathematics.’ 
Anderson’s claim for recognition as a mathematician rests largely but 
not entirely on the work he did in preparing Vieta’s writings for publica- 
tion. This was no light task, as Vieta, not a professional mathematician 
but a state official, had little time for preparing his writings for publica- 
tion, with the result that his note-books, in which he jotted down his con- 
clusions, either with very incomplete proofs or none at all, were apt to be 
unintelligible even to a trained mathematician. After his death in 1603 
his MSS. remained untouched for several years and were in danger of 
being lost, until Anderson was invited to prepare them for publication. 
It was not, however, until 1646 that the Elzevir Press published Vieta’s 
collected writings under the supervision of Van Schooten, the Dutch 
mathematician. But the publishers put on record that they had the 
privilege of using the MSS. prepared by Anderson. The selection of 
Anderson as editor of Vieta’s writings is ample testimony to the high 
place he held among his contemporaries as a competent mathematician, 
and when we reflect upon the importance of the discoveries of the great 
French mathematician, we are not asking too much in claiming for 
Anderson a share of the distinction that by right falls to the ‘ father of 
modern Algebra.’ 
The most elaborate of Anderson’s writings De Aequationum Recognitione 
et Emendatione deals with Vieta’s treatment of equations. Owing to the 
use of many terms, now long obsolete, it is very difficult to read. Like 
all scientific treatises of the time it is, of course, written in Latin. In the 
appendix he shows that the problem of trisecting an angle may be made to 
depend on the solution of a certain cubic, and he gives a very neat geo- 
metrical proof that the cubic must have three roots. Throughout his 
writings Anderson gave many examples of the use of algebraic geometry, 
and, indeed, in some respects, he anticipated Descartes who lived shortly 
after him. He had much in common with Ghetaldo, a contemporary 
writer whose influence in establishing the principles of analytical geometry 
is now being recognised. Anderson was in advance of his time when he 
wrote ‘that all the circumstances of a problem in analysis should be 
deducible from the consideration of equations.’ It has to be kept in 
mind that symbolic algebra was only coming into use in Anderson’s 
day. 
But Anderson was well versed in all the questions that agitated the 
mathematical world during the end of the sixteenth and the early years of 
the seventeenth century. He wrote on Maxima and Minima, on the 
Quadrature of the Circle, on Determinate Section where his attempts to 
restore the lost books of Apollonius called for commendation from Robert 
Simson, and on Diophantine Analysis. Oneof his most extensive writings 
is On Angular Sections, which deals with the trigonometry of multiple and 
sub-multiple angles. Many of the propositions were previously given 
