James Hume (
fl.
''Floruit'' ( ; usually abbreviated fl. or occasionally flor.; from Latin for 'flourished') denotes a date or period during which a person was known to have been alive or active. In English, the unabbreviated word may also be used as a noun indic ...
1639) was a Scottish mathematician. He is given credit for introducing the modern
exponential notation
Scientific notation is a way of expressing numbers that are too large or too small to be conveniently written in decimal form, since to do so would require writing out an inconveniently long string of digits. It may be referred to as scientif ...
, along with
René Descartes
René Descartes ( , ; ; 31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650) was a French philosopher, scientist, and mathematician, widely considered a seminal figure in the emergence of modern philosophy and Modern science, science. Mathematics was paramou ...
.
Life
The son of
David Hume of Godscroft
David Hume or Home of Godscroft (1558–1629) was a Scottish historian and political theorist, poet and controversialist, a major intellectual figure in Jacobean Scotland. It has been said that "Hume marks the culmination of the Scottish humani ...
, sometimes therefore called described as "Scotus Theagrius", James Hume lived in France.
Theagrius was a pen-name used by his father, and has been thought a
macaronic
Macaronic language is any expression using a mixture of languages, particularly bilingual puns or situations in which the languages are otherwise used in the same context (rather than simply discrete segments of a text being in different langua ...
form of "Godscroft".
Works
Hume published a Hebrew grammar in
Hamburg
Hamburg (, ; ), officially the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg,. is the List of cities in Germany by population, second-largest city in Germany after Berlin and List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, 7th-lar ...
, in 1624. On the title-page of his ''Pantaleonis Vaticinia Satyra'', dated
Rouen
Rouen (, ; or ) is a city on the River Seine, in northwestern France. It is in the prefecture of Regions of France, region of Normandy (administrative region), Normandy and the Departments of France, department of Seine-Maritime. Formerly one ...
, 1633, Hume is called "Med. Doctor". The ''Satyra'' is a Latin romance, imitating
John Barclay's ''Argenis''.
It is an "elegant neo-classic satire" influenced by
; but is crude. It is dedicated to
Robert Kerr, 1st Earl of Ancram
Robert Kerr, 1st Earl of Ancram (c. 1578–1654), was a Scottish nobleman, politician and writer.Chambers, Robert (1840)A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen Volume 3, Blackie and Son, pp 315-6.
Biography
He descended from a third son ...
, and has an historical appendix on contemporary affairs, mostly German. In 1634 Hume printed in Latin ''Prœlium ad Lipsiam'', ''Gustavus Magnus'', ''De Reditu Ducis Aureliensis ex Flandria'', as an appendix to his father's ''
De Unione Insulæ Britanniæ
This is a list of Jacobean union tracts, published or manuscript treatises bearing on the Jacobean debate on the Union
The Jacobean debate on the Union took place in the early years of the reign of James I of England, who came to the English ...
'' (Paris). Some Latin verses in the same book accuse
Morinus of plagiarism for having used some proofs of theorems given by Hume to
John Napier
John Napier of Merchiston ( ; Latinisation of names, Latinized as Ioannes Neper; 1 February 1550 – 4 April 1617), nicknamed Marvellous Merchiston, was a Scottish landowner known as a mathematician, physicist, and astronomer. He was the 8 ...
.
In 1636 Hume published at Paris ''Algèbre de Viète d'une Méthode nouuelle, claire et facile'', and ''Traité de la Trigonométric pour resoudre tous Triangles rectilignes et sphériques''. At the end of the latter appears a list of nine mathematical works which Hume had written in Latin.
[''Algebra Vietæ'', ''Algebra secundum Euclidem'', ''Arithmetica'', ''De Arte muniendi more Gallico'', the same ''more Hollandico'', ''Trigonometria'', ''Theoria Planetarum'', ''Sphæra Copernici'', and ''Ptolemaica Geometriæ Practica''.] There are also two non-mathematical works, ''De Horologiis'' and ''Grammatica Hebræa''. A translation of one of his works into French, apparently his ''De Arte muniendi more Gallico'', appeared under the title ''Fortifications Françaises d'une Méthode facile''.
See also
*
Exponentiation
In mathematics, exponentiation, denoted , is an operation (mathematics), operation involving two numbers: the ''base'', , and the ''exponent'' or ''power'', . When is a positive integer, exponentiation corresponds to repeated multiplication ...
(History of the notation)
Notes
Attribution
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hume, James
Scottish satirists
17th-century Scottish writers
17th-century Scottish male writers
17th-century Scottish mathematicians