Olinthus Gregory
British astronomer
Olinthus Gilbert Gregory (29 January 1774 – 2 February 1841) was an English mathematician, author, and editor.
Biography
Gregory was born on 29 January 1774 at Yaxley in Huntingdonshire, the son of Robert, a shoemaker, and Ann, who also had three younger daughters: Harriet Euphrasia, Sophia (who died in 1783) and Marianna.
Having been educated by Richard Weston, a Leicester botanist, Olinthus published a treatise, Lessons, Astronomical and Philosophical in 1796. After moving to Cambridge in 1796, Gregory first acted as sub-editor on the Cambridge Intelligencer, and then opened a booksellers shop.
In 1802 he obtained an appointment as mathematical master at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich through the influence of Charles Hutton, to whose notice he had been brought by a manuscript on the Use of the Sliding Rule; and when Hutton resigned in 1807 Gregory succeeded him in the professorship.
Gregory combined his love of mathematics with an interest in music, but not in the melodious sense: music should be subject to rational principles. He proposed "the substitution of proper characters to denote the different kinds of musical time, instead of those vague indefinite ones, which are now in use." No more 32 time, or Adagio and Allegro; rather, some absolute rate, based on the swing of a precisely-calibrated pendulum. Each composition should be played at its pre-defined speed, no matter who was conducting. In discussing Gregory's ideas, Werrett draws attention to the environment at Woolwich in which he developed them, and the use of the metronome to maintain a consistent rhythm in military music.
Gregory favoured the establishment of a secular university in London.
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This entry incorporates text from “Olinthus Gregory” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.