John Playfair, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

John Playfair

Scottish scientist and mathematician

Date of Birth: 10-Mar-1748

Place of Birth: Dundee, Scotland, United Kingdom

Date of Death: 20-Jul-1819

Profession: physicist, mathematician, geologist

Zodiac Sign: Pisces

John Playfair FRSE, FRS (10 March 1748 – 20 July 1819) was a Church of Scotland minister, remembered as a scientist and mathematician, and a professor of natural philosophy at the University of Edinburgh.
He is best known for his book Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth (1802), which summarised the work of James Hutton.
It was through this book that Hutton's principle of uniformitarianism, later taken up by Charles Lyell, first reached a wide audience.
Playfair's textbook Elements of Geometry made a brief expression of Euclid's parallel postulate known now as Playfair's axiom. In 1783 he was a co-founder of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
He served as General Secretary to the society 1798–1819.