John Keill

John Keill attended an Edinburgh school, then studied at Edinburgh University under David Gregory obtaining his degree in 1692. Keill went to Oxford with David Gregory in 1691 and studied at Balliol College, obtaining an Oxford degree in 1694.

At Oxford Keill lectured on Newton's work and was soon appointed as a lecturer in experimental philosophy. He was appointed deputy to the professor of natural philosophy in 1699, a post he held until 1709.

Keill was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1700 and Savilian Professor of Astronomy at Oxford in 1712.

Keill acted as a propagator of Newton's philosophy and argued against Whiston and others. He claimed that Leibniz had plagiarised Newton's invention of the calculus and he served as Newton's avowed Champion.

Keill wrote in Introductio ad veram (published in Leiden in 1725)

The only true Philosophers are those who would account for all Effects and Phenomena by the known established Laws of Motion and Mechanics.

His work Euclides elementorum libri priores sex published in 1715 studies trigonometry and logarithms. He also wrote on forces between particles and on theories of the origin of the universe.

Two years before he died, Keill was left a fortune on the death of his brother.

Texto original por: J J O'Connor and E F Robertson

JOC/EFR December 1996	School of Mathematics and Statistics University of St Andrews, Scotland
The URL of this page is: http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/history/Mathematicians/Keill.htm