SIMPSON, THOMAS, a celebrated English mathe matician, was born at Market Bosworth in Leicester shire, in 1710. He was brought up to his father's profession of a weaver, but such was his love of study, that he soon quitted his profession and supported him self by teaching a school. An absurd propensity for astrology, while it rendered him a sort of oracle in his neighbourhood, involved him in some difficulties. which obliged him to remove to Derby, where he continued sonic years, following his trade in the day, and teaching a school in the evening. Notwithstanding his industrious habits, he fouud it difficult to provide for his family, and he wa5 then induced to remove to London in 1736. Here he followed his business in Spittalfields. and taught mathematics at his leisure hours. and so great was his success, that he brought his wife and three children to London, where he set tled himself permanently.
His first work was a New Treatise of Fluxions, which was published by subscription in 1737, and such was its reception, that, in 1740, he published d Treatise on the Nature and Laws of Chance, which was followed in the same year, with his Essays on several curious and interesting subjects in Speculative and Mixed Mathe matics. These works extended his reputation even to foreign countries, and he was elected a member of the Swedish Academy of Sciences. Il is Doctrine of .dnnui ties and Reversions, appeared in the same year, and an .dppendix to it in 1741. Supported by the influence of Mr. Jones, the father of Sir William, our author was, in
1743, appointed professor of mathematics in\Voolwich, and in the same year he published his Mathematical Dissertations. In 1745, he was admitted a fellow of the Royal Society, having been excused his admission fees on account of his limited income. In 1744, he published his Treatise on .6'1 (zebra, which was enlarged in 1755. In 1747, he published his Elements of Geo metry, which was reprinted in 1760, and subsequent years. In 1748, Mr. Simpson printed his T•igonome try Plane and Spherical, with the Construction and '9p plication of Logarithms. His Select Exercises for Young Proficients in Mathematics appeared in 1752, and his last work, viz. his Miscellaneous Tracts, came out in 1757.
Mr. Simpson was likewise the author of several pa pers which appeared in the Philosophical Transac tions, and he edited the Lady's Diary from 1754 till 1760, a work to which he had been a contributor since 1736, and which he raised to a very high degree of respectability. By the closeness of his application, his health began to suffer. A languor of mind and body supervened, and the vexation arising out of a difference with one of his colleagues exaggerated the calamities under which he suffered. In February, 1761, he set out for Bosworth, to seek in his native air the elements of health, but he gradually grew worse, and expired on the 14th of May, 1761, in the 51st year of his age.