Folk Fae Fife

The Fife Science Festival

Relatively few Fifers are found on these pages, not because there were not many mathematicians of note, but rather because those who studied maths often excelled in other areas, such as physics or astronomy. Consult those pages also for prominent mathematicians.

Today, Mathematics and Statistics is a large department at the University of St Andrews. Current research topics include applied mathematics, pure mathematics and statistics.

Napier was a mathematician, physicist, astronomer and astrologer who was born in Edinburgh and studied at St Andrews. He is most famous as the inventor of logarithms. He published Mirifici logarithmorum canonis descriptio in 1614 and consistently used a decimal point.

Thomas Chalmers

Born in Anstruther and ordained as minister at Kilmany, Chalmers was a popular lecturer in mathematics, but his lectures spurred too much controversy and were discontinued by the University. He continued to lecture privately, also in chemistry. He published on a variety of subjects.

· 17 Mar 1780 – 31 May 1847, Anstruther and University of St Andrews lecturer

· 1911-2009, University of St Andrews lecturer

John Napier of Merchiston

Ledermann first came to St Andrews on a scholarship in 1933 to avoid Nazi persecution and remained to teach. He published many texts, such as Complex numbers 1960 and Integral calculus 1964, but was known for homology, group theory and number theory. He also taught at Dundee, Manchester and Sussex.

Walter Ledermann

Gregory’s contributions to mathematics led to his placement as the first Regius Chair for Mathematics at St Andrews by Charles II. Often compared to Isaac Newton, Gregory made many advances in trigonometry, discovering infinite series representations for several trigonometric functions.

James Gregory

· Nov 1638 – Oct 1675, University of St Andrews professor

· 1550 – 4 Apr 1617, University of St Andrews alumnus

Ollerenshaw has published at least 26 mathematical papers, her best-known contribution being to most-perfect pandiagonal magic squares. She earned a doctorate from Somerville College, Oxford, named for Mary Somerville (q.v.) and served Rusholme as Conservative Councillor for 26 years.

Dame Kathleen Timpson Ollerenshaw, DBE

· born 1 Oct 1912, St Leonard’s School alumna, St Andrews

Wallace was the first to publish the concept of the Simson line in 1799, which erroneously was attributed to Robert Simson. In 1807 he proved a result about polygons with an equal area, that later became known as the Bolyai–Gerwien theorem. He also invented the pantograph.

William Wallace

· 23 Sept 1768 —28 Apr 1843, Dysart

E-mail:

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