William Wallace (September 23, 1768 in
Dysart—April 28,
1843 in Edinburgh
) was a Scottish mathematician.
Biography
Wallace
was born at Dysart
in Fife
, where he
received his school education. In 1784 his family removed to
Edinburgh, where he himself was set to learn the trade of a
bookbinder; but his taste for mathematics had already developed
itself, and he made such use of his leisure hours that before the
completion of his apprenticeship he had made considerable
acquirements in geometry, algebra and astronomy. He was further
assisted in his studies by John Robison (1739-1805) and
John Playfair, to whom his abilities had
become known. After various changes of situation, dictated mainly
by a desire to gain time for study, he became assistant teacher of
mathematics in the academy of Perth in 1794, and this post he
exchanged in 1803 for a mathematical mastership in the Royal
Military College at Great Marlow (afterwards at Sandhurst with a
recommendation by Playfair). In 1819 he was chosen to succeed John
Leslie (or John Playfair?) in the chair of mathematics at
Edinburgh.He developed a reputation
for being an excellent teacher. Among his students was
Mary Somerville. In 1838 he retired from the
university due to ill health.
Mathematical contributions
In his earlier years Wallace was an occasional contributor to
Leybourne's
Mathematical Repository and the
Gentleman's Mathematical Companion. Between 1801 and 1810
he contributed articles on “Algebra,” “Conic Sections,”
“Trigonometry,” and several others in mathematical and physical
science to the fourth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and
some of these were retained in subsequent editions from the fifth
to the eighth inclusive. He was also the author of the principal
mathematical articles in the
Edinburgh Encyclopaedia,
edited by David Brewster (1808-1830). He also contributed many
important papers to the
Transactions of the Royal Society
of Edinburgh.
He mainly worked in the field of geometry and in 1799 became the
first to publish the concept of the
Simson
line, which erroneously was attributed to
Robert Simson. His most important contribution
to British mathematics however was, that he was one of the first
mathematicians introducing and promoting the advancement of
calculus in continental Europe to
Britain.
References
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