Brook Taylor

Brook Taylor ( born August 18, 1685 in Edmonton, Middlesex, † December 29 1731 in Somerset House, London ) was a British mathematician and a member of the Royal Society. According to him, was, inter alia, the Taylor series named.

Life and work

Taylor studied at Cambridge mathematics. In 1708 he developed a solution to the problem of the oscillation. His main work Methodus incrementorum directa et inversa ( " method of direct and inverse increment " ) in 1715 yielded studies on the method of finite differences, on singular solutions of differential equations and, for the first time in the history of mathematics, on the vibrating string on the basis of mechanical principles. Furthermore, it contained him known since 1712 power series expansion of a differentiable function whose fundamental importance for the differential calculus Joseph -Louis Lagrange noticed until 1772.

As a highly gifted artist Taylor wrote about the basics of perspective in 1715 and first described the principle of the vanishing point.

Named after him are the Taylor series and Taylor's formula with which to represent continuously differentiable functions as power series or can be approximated by polynomials. The moon crater Taylor and the asteroid ( 31122 ) Brook Taylor have been named after him.

He was temporarily secretary of the Royal Society.