Thomas Simpson | Biography

An almost entirely self-educated man, Thomas Simpson is most famous for the advances he made in the areas of interpolation and numerical methods of integration, although he also did work on probability theory. His enthusiasm and energy led him to produce many books that were popular in his day.

Simpson, the son of a weaver, was born in Market Bosworth, Leicestershire, England on August 20, 1710. Although his father pressured Simpson to follow in his professional footsteps, Simpson wanted to do something different. At a young age he moved to the town of Nuneaton, where he began supplementing his meager formal education by studying on his own and weaving to make a living. A peddler wandering through the town loaned Simpson books on mathematics and astrology, which Simpson studied intently. He was also motivated in his studies by wanting to understand an eclipse that he witnessed in 1724.

Anecdotal records suggest that Simpson soon became so knowledgeable of mathematics and astronomy that he acquired a reputation as a fortuneteller or astrologer. He turned to that profession to make money and also married his widowed landlady, although her son was older than he was. In 1733, according to one source, an "unfortunate accident" caused Simpson to leave his family behind and move to another town, Derby, where he tutored at an evening school and resumed weaving. By 1736, he had moved to London, where there was an audience for his mathematical talents and where he joined a group of wandering lecturers who used the city's coffeehouses as their classrooms. He began publishing his first papers, on fluxions, in the city's well-known Ladies' Diary. The following year, he published A New Treatise of Fluxions. The success of his first book and the academic community's rising awareness of the new mathematician's promise allowed Simpson to bring his family to London.

Simpson seems to have been an energetic scholar, since in addition to his tutorial and teaching responsibilities, he also found time to write The Laws of Chance (1740), Annuities and Reversions (1742), and Mathematical Dissertations (1743). Later in 1743, Simpson accepted a job as a mathematics teacher at the Royal Military Academy in Woolwich, which he would keep for the rest of his life. Also that year, he formulated what would become known as Simpson's rule, which allows estimation of the area under a curve using parabolic arcs. Simpson maintained a strenuous writing schedule as well, publishing the popular textbooks Algebra in 1745, Geometry in 1747, Trigonometry in 1748, and Doctrine and Applications of Fluxions in 1750.

In 1754 Simpson took on the job of editor of the Ladies' Diary in addition to his teaching position at the academy. The intense demands of the job reportedly weakened Simpson's health, however, and when he left the Ladies' Diary in 1760 to serve as a consultant for the firm hired to build a bridge across the Thames River, he only hastened his demise. He died in the town of his birth on May 14, 1761.