Alexander Anderson

Alexander Anderson ( in Aberdeen – in Paris) was a Scottish mathematician.

Life He was born in Aberdeen, possibly in 1582, according to a print which suggests he was aged 35 in 1617. It is unknown where he was educated, but it is likely that he initially studied writing and philosophy (the "belles lettres") in his home city of Aberdeen.

He then went to the continent, and was a professor of mathematics in Paris by the start of the seventeenth century.

Work He was selected by the executors of François Viète to revise and edit Viète's manuscript works. Viète died in 1603, and it is unclear if Anderson knew him, but his eminence was sufficient to attract the attention of the dead man's executors. Anderson corrected and expanded upon Viète's manuscripts, which extended known geometry to the new algebra, which used general symbols to represent quantities. and copies of two other works, Ex. Math. and Stereometria Triangulorum Sphæricorum, were in the possession of Sir Alexander Hume until the after the middle of the seventeenth century. 1615: Ad Angularum Sectionem Analytica Theoremata F. Vieta 1615: Pro Zetetico Apolloniani 1615: Francisci Vietae Fontenaeensis 1616: Vindiciae Archimedis 1619: Alexandri Andersoni Exercitationum Mathematicarum Decas Prima