[516] Ignace Gaston Pardies (c. 1636-1673), a Jesuit, professor of ancient languages and later of mathematics and physics at the Collège of Pau, and afterwards professor of rhetoric at the Collège Louis-le-Grand at Paris. He wrote on geometry, astronomy and physics.
[517] Pierre Fermat was born in 1608 (or possibly in 1595) near Toulouse, and died in 1665. Although connected with the parliament of Toulouse, his significant work was in mathematics. He was one of the world's geniuses in the theory of numbers, and was one of the founders of the theory of probabilities and of analytic geometry. After his death his son published his edition of Diophantus (1670) and his Varia opera mathematica (1679).
[518] This may be Christopher Townley (1603-1674) the antiquary, or his nephew, Richard, who improved the micrometer already invented by Gascoigne.
[519] Adrien Auzout a native of Rouen, who died at Rome in 1691. He invented a screw micrometer with movable threads (1666) and made many improvements in astronomical instruments.
[520] See Vol. I, page 66, note 9 {86}.
[521] See Vol. I, page 124, note 7 {248}.
[522] John Machin (d. 1751) was professor of astronomy at Gresham College (1713-1751) and secretary of the Royal Society. He translated Newton's Principia into English. His computation of π to 100 places is given in William Jones's Synopsis palmariorum matheseos (1706).
[523] Pierre Rémond de Montmort (1678-1719) was canon of Notre Dame until his marriage. He was a gentleman of leisure and devoted himself to the study of mathematics, especially of probabilities.
[524] Roger Cotes (1682-1716), first Plumian professor of astronomy and physics at Cambridge, and editor of the second edition of Newton's Principia. His posthumous Harmonia Mensurarum (1722) contains "Cotes's Theorem" on the binomial equation. Newton said of him, "If Mr. Cotes had lived we had known something."
[525] See Vol. I, page 135, note 3 {281}.