Roger Cotes

Roger Cotes (* July 10, 1682 in Burbage, Leicestershire, England; † June 5, 1716 in Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England ) was an English mathematician.

Life and work

Cotes father, Roger Cotes sen. was a school headmaster in Burbage, his mother was the Grace Farmer.Roger had a one year older brother Anthony and sister Susanna who was a year younger than himself, he first attended, at the age of twelve years, the Leicester School. Cotes mathematical talents were there early and was encouraged by his uncle John Smith, who was a clergyman. He attended St. Paul's School in London and graduated from the April 6, 1699 at Trinity College, Cambridge where he got his degree in 1702 and in 1705 a Fellow of Trinity. In 1706 he became professor of astronomy (the first Plumian professor, named after the founder ), recommended by Isaac Newton and others. The corresponding newly established observatory ( Newton donated a clock ) was above the great gate of the College. Here, for example, observed Cotes the total solar eclipse of 22 April 1715. His skills were however more to the theoretical realm ( the Astronomer Royal John Flamsteed was it also a dedicated opponent of the appointment ). In 1711 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1713 he appeared in the clergy - he became a deacon and priest. He died at the age of 33 from a sudden fever.

Roger Cotes was in his time as the most important mathematicians of England to Newton. He worked closely with Isaac Newton, especially in the second edition of Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, which was developed in close discussion between the two from 1709 to 1713.

The Newton-Cotes formulas, a method of numerical integration are mitbenannt after him.

A bust of Cotes is in the Wren Library in Cambridge.

Works

During his lifetime he published only one essay " Logometria " ( Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, March 1714 ) on approximations of continued fractions.

Several of his works have been six years after his death in 1722 by Robert Smith under the title Harmonia mensurarum, sive analysis & synthesis by Rationum & angulorum mensuras promotae: accedunt alia opuscula mathematica. published in Cambridge. Robert Smith was his cousin, with whom he had grown up, and later his assistant and successor in Cambridge as Plumian professor. Among the published works were his work on interpolation ( Canonotechnia ) and an early version of the method of least squares.

1738 Smith published the Hydrostatical and pneumatical lectures of Cotes. Further work of Cotes was Thomas Simpson 1750 in The Doctrine and Application of Fluxions published in London.