Thomas Simpson

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Warning: this page is about the mathematician Thomas Simpson. He should not be confused with the composer Thomas Simpson who lived from 1582 until 1628.

Thomas Simpson (August 20, 1710 – May 14, 1761) was a British mathematician, inventor and eponym of Simpson's rule to approximate definite integrals. However, this rule was also found 200 years earlier from Johannes Kepler, in the so-called Keplersche Fassregel. Simpson was born in Market Bosworth, Leicestershire. He taught himself mathematics, then turned to astrology. After an unfortunate "devil-raising", he and his wife had to flee to Derby [1]. They later moved to London.

From 1743, he taught mathematics at the Royal Military Academy in Woolwich.

Apparently, the method that became known as Simpson's rule was well known and used earlier by Bonaventura Cavalieri (a student of Galileo) in 1639, later rediscovered by James Gregory, and was only attributed to Simpson.

[edit] Works

Treatise of Fluxions (1737)
The Nature and Laws of Chance (1740)
The Doctrine of Annuities and Reversions (1742)
Mathematical Dissertation on a Variety of Physical and Analytical Subjects (1743)
A Treatise of Algebra (1745)
Elements of Geometry (1747)
Trigonometry, Plane and Spherical (1748)
Select Exercises in Mathematics (1752)
Miscellaneous Tracts on Some Curious Subjects in Mechanics, Physical Astronomy and Special Mathematics (1757)