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John Playfair
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OverviewAI-generated
John Playfair was a British mathematician, geologist, physicist, and naturalist born in Dundee in 1748. He was educated at the University of St Andrews and later served as a professor and parson at the University of Edinburgh. His professional work focused on mathematics, and he was influenced by James Hutton. Playfair was also a student of Adam Ferguson.
Playfair was a member of the Royal Society and the Royal Society of Edinburgh, receiving the title of Fellow from both institutions. His work is recognized in the Royal Society collection. He was the sibling of William Playfair and taught John Leslie, who became his doctoral student. Playfair died in Burntisland in 1819. He wrote in English and is described by sources including the Nordisk familjebok, The Nuttall Encyclopædia, and the Encyclopædia Britannica 11th edition.
Synthesized by Vinony from 23 facts across 2 sources: Wikidata, Vinony collections. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.
Key facts
- Born
- ( 1748-03-10 ) 10 March 1748 , Benvie, Forfarshire , Scotland
- Died
- 20 July 1819 (1819-07-20) (aged 71), Burntisland, Fife , Scotland
- Resting place
- Old Calton Burial Ground
- Alma mater
- University of St Andrews University of Edinburgh
- Known for
- Playfair's axiom Playfair's law Playfair (lunar crater) Playfair (Martian crater) playfairite
- Fields
- Mathematics , natural philosophy , geology
- Institutions
- University of Edinburgh
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- human
- Given name
- John
- Gender
- male
- Citizenship
- United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
- Place of birth
- Dundee
- Place of death
- Burntisland
- Sibling
- William Playfair
- Occupation
- physicist
- Position held
- parson
- Employer
- Adam Ferguson
- Languages spoken
- English language
- Notable work
- Playfair's axiom
- Doctoral student
- John Leslie
- Field of work
- mathematics
- Image
- John Playfair. Stipple engraving by J. Thomson, 1819. Wellcome V0004707.jpg
Show 9 more facts
- member of
- Royal Society of Edinburgh
- Commons category
- John Playfair
- date of birth
- 1748-03-10
- date of death
- 1819-07-20
- described by source
- Encyclopædia Britannica 11th edition
- influenced by
- James Hutton
- student
- John Leslie
- writing language
- English language
- maintained by WikiProject
- WikiProject Mathematics
via Wikidata · CC0
~7 min read
Encyclopedic overview
John Playfair FRSE, FRS (10 March 1748 – 20 July 1819) was a Church of Scotland minister, remembered as a scientist and mathematician, and a professor of natural philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. He is best known for his book Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth (1802), which summarised the work of James Hutton. It was through this book that Hutton's principle of uniformitarianism, later taken up by Charles Lyell, first reached a wide audience. Playfair's textbook Elements of Geometry made a brief expression of Euclid's parallel postulate known now as Playfair's axiom.
In 1783 he was a co-founder of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He served as General Secretary to the society 1798–1819.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “John Playfair” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.