120 SCIENTIFIC SURVEY OF ABERDEEN AND DISTRICT 
Macravrin, CoLin.—The purely Celtic part of Scotland has not been 
so productive of mathematicians as the sister island, Ireland, has been, 
but one outstanding man at least has come from the Gaelic-speaking west, 
namely, Colin Maclaurin. He was born in 1698 in Glendaruel, the 
Argyllshire parish in which his father was minister. At an age when boys 
nowadays are only in the primary school, Maclaurin enrolled as a student 
in Glasgow University, where in due course he took his degree of Master 
of Arts. His great precocity attracted the attention of Robert Simson, 
the Professor of Mathematics, whose name should be well known in Scot- 
land as the editor of the Euclid on which so many generations of Scotsmen 
were reared. It was Maclaurin’s intention to study for the Church, and 
with that in view he read privately at home for a year or two. But during 
this period his taste for mathematics still further developed, and on a 
vacancy occurring in the Chair of Mathematics in Marischal College 
in 1717, he was induced to become an applicant. In those days 
vacancies in professorships in Aberdeen were filled by competition, 
and in this instance the examination lasted over a period of ten days. 
In spite of his extreme youth—he was only nineteen years of age— 
Maclaurin was successful, one of the competitors being Alex. Malcolm, 
a well-known teacher in Aberdeen. During his tenure of the chair, the 
study of mathematics in Marischal College was greatly stimulated, and, 
as was subsequently the case when Maclaurin went to Edinburgh, it 
almost became fashionable to be reckoned as a member of the mathematical 
class at the University. Visits to London in 1719 and 1721 brought him 
into contact with Newton, and he was elected a member of the Royal 
Society. From that time onwards a steady stream of papers from his pen 
appeared in the Transactions of the Society which readily established his 
reputation as a mathematician, and gained for him the friendship and 
esteem of Newton, Clarke and other leaders of the scientific world of the 
day. Maclaurin’s earliest writings dealt with the geometry of higher 
plane curves, a subject which he attacked from a point of view that would 
now be described as projective. In 1725 he became Professor of Mathe- 
matics in Edinburgh University, and held the appointment till his death 
in 1746. His greatest work is his F/uxions, a two-volume lecture. 
MatcoLtmM, ALEXANDER.—Alexander Malcolm deserves mention as 
author of a treatise on Arithmetic, published in London in 1730, and 
described by De Morgan as ‘ one of the most extensive and erudite books 
of the eighteenth century.’ He was held in great esteem in Aberdeen as 
a teacher of mathematics, and besides the above compendious work was 
author of A Treatise on Arithmetic and Book-keeping in the Italian Method, 
published in 1718, and Treatise on Music in 1721. 
TraIL, WILLIAM.—William Trail, a student both of Marischal College 
and Glasgow University, held the Chair of Mathematics in the former 
from 1766 to 1779, when he resigned on his appointment as Chancellor of 
the Bishopric of Down and Connor in Ireland. He was the author of 
Elements of Algebra for the Use of Schools and Universities, published 
anonymously in 1778, and of a Life of Robert Simson, under whom he 
studied mathematics in Glasgow. 
