Some unknown documents associated with William Wallace (1768–1843)

Abstract

A folder of manuscript and printed material has recently been brought to our attention by a descendant of William Wallace. Wallace was Professor of Mathematics at Edinburgh University from 1819 to 1838 and previously taught at the Royal Military College, Marlow and Sandhurst. Copies of much of this material have now been put on a website, with the owners' approval. Here we describe the contents, which include samples by David Gregory and John Landen, and letters to Wallace from William Herschel, Henry Brougham, Alexander Christison, ‘Mrs Greig’ (Mary Fairfax Somerville), Walter Scott, and others. Other material includes Wallace's letters of appointment, a printed pamphlet on the burial place of John Napier, a list of mathematical books in Wallace's library in 1792, correspondence on astronomy and surveying, and a Russian translation of Wallace's work on conics.

Corrections

Please note the following corrections to ‘William Wallace's chorograph (1839): a rare mathematical instrument’ by Alex D D Craik in BSHM Bulletin, 25 (2010), 23–31.

Page 26, line 3 of quotation: ‘the given angle ADC’ should be ‘the given angle BDC’.

Page 28, line 8 from the end: replace ‘beedle’ by ‘needle’; line 2 from the end: replace ‘the three angles’ by ‘the sines of the three angles’; last line: replace ‘angle BDC etc.’ by ‘sine of angle BDC etc.’

Acknowledgment

We are most grateful for the continuing interest and cooperation of Mr Michael Cox, and for his generosity and that of other family members in making this archive collection available for copying. We also thank Mr Peter Hingley, the librarian of the Royal Astronomical Society, and acknowledge the Society's permission to reproduce in Appendix 3 the text of a manuscript in its care.