Andrew Mackay (mathematician)

Andrew Mackay FRSE (1760–1809) was a Scottish mathematician, known as a teacher of navigation.

Life

He lived in Aberdeen, where he was in October 1781 appointed unsalaried keeper of the observatory on the Castle hill. There he made calculated the latitude and longitude of his native town (see infra). He was created LL.D. of Aberdeen in 1786; he was also Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, honorary member of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle-on-Tyne, and mathematical examiner to the corporation of Trinity House (1805–9) and to the East India Company.[1]

In his later years Mackay took pupils in London at his house in George Street, Trinity Square; he taught mathematics and natural philosophy, navigation, architecture, and engineering. He died on 3 August 1809, leaving a widow and children, and was buried in Allhallows Barking.[1]

Works

Mackay contributed to the theory of navigation, and was a calculator of mathematical tables. His main works are:

Other works are:

He also contributed articles to the Encyclopædia Britannica, third edition (1797), on "Navigation", "Parallax", "Pendulum", "Projection of the Sphere", "Shipbuilding", and (naval) "Tactics"; and he was a contributor to Rees's Cyclopædia. He published a paper on the latitude and longitude of Aberdeen in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, vol. iv. Examples of Mackay as a computer are in the Scriptores Logarithmici of Francis Maseres, vol. vi.[1]

References

Attribution

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Platts, Charles (1893). "Mackay, Andrew". In Lee, Sidney. Dictionary of National Biography 35. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 

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