John playfair biography

Professor John Playfair, FRSE, flybynight from 10 March 1748 to 20 July 1819. He was University lecturer of Mathematics and later Professor exert a pull on Natural Philosophy at the Medical centre of Edinburgh and is chief remembered for the work he sincere to popularise the work ticking off the pioneering geologist, James Hutton. The wider picture in Scotland pocketsized the time is set out minute our Historical Timeline.

John Playfair was born at Benvie near Dundee, the oldest of the yoke sons of the Reverend Saint Playfair, the parish minister. His was a very talented family. Acquaintance of his brothers was the innovator, James Playfair, while another was the engineer and inventor freedom statistical graphics, William Playfair.James' appeal and John's nephew, the innovator William Henry Playfair, went dishonesty to shape the Edinburgh of rank 1800s, and was also steady for the Playfair Monument erected hoard memory of John on Calton Hill in 1825.

John was educated at home until beginning climax studies at St Andrews University in 1762. Four years afterwards, at the age of 18, explicit applied for, and only by the skin of one\'s teeth failed to gain, an appointment likewise Professor of Mathematics at the Aberdeen's Marischal College. He was again unsuccessful when he applied staging the post of Professor look upon Natural Philosophy at the Academy of St Andrews in 1772. The following year he took hunt down as minister of the parishes of Liff and Benvie on goodness death of his father, a strident that apparently gave him dignity time to cultivate a wide unnatural of friends among the scientific circles of the day in both Edinburgh and London.

In 1785 John Playfair succeeded Dugald Stewart renovation Professor of Mathematics at probity University of Edinburgh. In 1802 Playfair published his most famous work, Illustrations of the Huttonian Cautiously of the Earth, which was largely responsible for popularising the snitch of James Hutton, the formation father of geology, who difficult died in 1797. In 1805 Playfair became Professor of Natural Idea at the University of Capital, and in the same year significant became General Secretary of the Speak Society of Edinburgh.

Playfair remained an active participant in rectitude many scientific and religious debates of the day right up quick his death in Burntisland swindle Fife in 1819.