The life and mathematics of George Campbell, F.R.S.

AbstractLittle is known of George Campbell except for his 1728 paper on “impossible” roots of requations, which preceded one by Colin Maclaurin on the same subject. Maclaurin privately accused Campbell of plagiarism, which soon thereafter led to a public priority dispute. This paper discusses two mathematical works by Campbell which have not been previously reported: a manuscript volume of lecture notes, apparently from a time when he was a private tutor at the University of Edinburgh, and a published paper in which he produced a new result regarding complex roots of equations almost thirty years before its apparent rediscovery by Edward Waring. The biographical gleanings of S. Mills (Archive for History of Exact Sciences 28, 149–164 (1983)) R. V. Wallis and P. J. Wallis, Biobibliography of British Mathematics and Its Applications, Part II: 1701–1760, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1986), are also supplemented with a modest amount of new material, including a letter to the Duke of Newcastle, dated 1754, and some genealogical data which identify some probable family connections, although his date and place of birth remain uncertain