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See also: born of humble parentage at Largo, Fifeshire, on the 16th of See also: April 1766, and received his early See also: education there and at Leven
.
In his thirteenth See also: year, encouraged by See also: friends who had even then remarked his aptitude for mathematical and See also: physical science, he entered the university of St Andrews
.
On the completion of his arts course, he nominally studied divinity at See also: Edinburgh until 1787; in 1788–1789 he spent rather more than a year as private tutor in a Virginian See also: family, and from 1790 till the close of 1792 he held a similar See also: appointment at See also: Etruria in See also: Staffordshire, with the family of Josiah See also: Wedgwood, employing his spare See also: time in experimental research and in preparing a See also: translation of Buffon's Natural See also: History of Birds, which was published in nine 8vo vols. in 1793, and brought him some See also: money
.
For the next twelve years (passed chiefly in See also: London or at Largo, with an occasional visit to the continent of See also: Europe) he continued his physical studies, which resulted in numerous papers contributed by him to See also: Nicholson's Philosophical Journal, and in the publication (1804) of the Experimental Inquiry into the Nature end Properties of Heat, a See also: work which gained him the Rumford Medal of the Royal Society of London
.
In 18o5 he was elected
burgh, not, however, without violent though unsuccessful opposition on the See also: part of a narrow-minded clerical party who accused him of See also: heresy in something he had said as to the " unsophisticated notions of mankind " about the relation of cause and effect
.
During his tenure of this chair he published two volumes of a Course of See also: Mathematics--the first, entitled Elements of See also: Geometry, Geometrical Analysis and See also: Plane Trigonometry, in 1809, and the second, Geometry of See also: Curve Lines, in 1813; the third See also: volume, on Descriptive Geometry and the Theory of Solids was never completed
.
With reference to his invention (in 181o) of a See also: process of artificial congelation, he published in 1813 A See also: Short Account of Experiments and See also: Instruments depending on the relations of Air to Heat and Moisture; and in 1818 a paper by him " On certain impressions of cold transmitted from the higher atmosphere, with an instrument (the aethrioscope) adapted to measure them," appeared in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh
.
In 1819, on the See also: death of Playfair, he was promoted to the more congenial chair of natural philosophy, which he continued to hold until his death, and in 1823 he published, chiefly for the use of his class, the first volume of his never-completed Elements of Natural Philosophy
.
See also: Leslie's See also: main contributions to physics were made by the help of the " See also: differential thermometer," an instrument whose invention was contested with him by Count Rumford
.
By adapting to this instrument various ingenious devices he was enabled to employ it in a See also: great variety of investigations, connected especially with photometry, hygroscopy and the temperature of space
.
In 182o he was elected a corresponding member of the Institute of See also: France, the only distinction of the kind which he valued, and early in 1832 he was created a knight
.
He died at Coates, a small See also: property which he had acquired near Largo, on the 3rd of See also: November 1832
.
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