Sir John Leslie, 1766–1832

Abstract

THE centenary occurs on November 3 of the death of Sir John Leslie, mathematician and physicist. Leslie was a native of the small town of Largo in Fife, where his father, a most intelligent man who had come from the neighbourhood of St. Andrews, was a cabinet-maker. Leslie's mother's name was Carstairs. When only thirteen years old, John was sent to the University of St. Andrews to study for the ministry of the Church of Scotland, but after six sessions there and one or two years at Edinburgh until 1787, he gave up the idea of the Church and devoted himself to the study of his favourite mathematics. His paper on “The Resolution of Indeterminate Problems” had the honour of being admitted to the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh when its author was as yet in his twenty-second year.