The prickly genius - Colin MacLaurin (1698-1746)

Colin MacLaurin was born in February $1698$ at Kilmodan, Glendaruel, Argyllshire, where his father was a minister. Much of MacLaurin’s upbringing was the responsibility of his uncle, a minister in Kilfinan, Argyllshire: MacLaurin’s father died some six weeks after his son’s birth and his mother died in $1707$. 

In $1709$ at the tender age of eleven MacLaurin entered Glasgow University to study for the ministry, although he soon became interested in geometry and was perhaps influenced by Robert Simson, who was certainly in Glasgow during part of MacLaurin’s student days and who became Professor of Mathematics at Glasgow in $1711$. 

MacLaurin graduated M.A. in $1713$, for which he produced a short philosophical dissertation (in Latin) ‘On gravity and other forces’.

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