but the year 1582 is assigned as that of his birth on the authority of a print representing him in 1617 as of the age of thirty-five. He taught mathematics in Paris early in the seventeenth century, and appears to have been a friend of Vieta, who died in 1603, and whose posthumous writings he edited with great ability, developing much that was only indicated, and demonstrating much that was barely stated. He alludes more than once to the poverty of his circumstances; abstruse studies and the neglect of common and easy life brought him, he tells us, more wisdom than riches (Vindiciæ Archimedis, Dedication). He is not heard of after 1619, the date of his last publication, and is accordingly believed to have died about that time. The celebrated James Gregory was, on the mother's side, connected with his family. His works are as follows:—
- ‘Supplementum Apollonii Redivivi,’ Paris, 1612, in which he displays a remarkable command of the ancient analysis, and supplies the deficiencies in Ghetaldi's attempted restoration of the lost book of Apollonius Περὶ νεύσεων
- ‘Αὶτιολογία pro Zetetico Apolloniani Problematis à se jam pridem edito in supplemento Apollonii Redivivi,’ Paris, 1615, an addition to the preceding.
- ‘Francisci Vietæ de Equationum recognitione et emendatione tractatus duo,’ Paris, 1615, contain Vieta's improvements in the transformation and reduction of algebraical equations, with an appendix by Anderson, showing that the solution of cubic equations can be made to depend upon the trisection of an angle.
- ‘Ad Angularium Sectionum Analyticen Theoremata καθολικώτερα,’ Paris, 1615, dedicated to Charles, Prince of Wales, adds to Vieta's theorems on angular sections demonstrations subsequently incorporated in the edition of the French algebraist's works published by Schooten, at Leyden, in 1646.
- ‘Vindiciæ Archimedis,’ Paris, 1616, refutes the claim of Lansberg, a Belgian astronomer, to have solved the problem of the quadrature of the circle, and criticises Kepler's ‘Stereometria.’
- ‘Animadversionis in Franciscum Vietam à Clemente Cyriaco nuper editæ brevis Διάκρισις,’ Paris, 1617.
- ‘Exercitationum Mathematicarum Decas Prima,’ Paris, 1619. Two works of Anderson on stereometry seem to have perished. One is mentioned by himself (Ex. Math.), and copies of both (the second entitled ‘Stereometria Triangulorum Sphæricorum’) were in possession of Sir Alexander Hume until long after the middle of the seventeenth century.
[Correspondence of Scientific Men (Rigaud), ii. 178, 515; Montucla, Hist. d. Math. (1799–1802), i. 606, ii. 5; Hutton, Phil. and Math. Dict. (1815), i. 90, 115; De Morgan in S.D.U.K. Dictionary (1842–4), ii. 577; Abstract of Geom. Writings of A. A. (T. S. Davies), App. to Ladies' Diary, 1840.]
ANDERSON, ALEXANDER (d. 1811), botanist, was appointed in 1785 superintendent of the government botanic garden at St. Vincent, where he showed much activity. He was a correspondent of Sir Joseph Banks, through whom he contributed to the Royal Society in 1789 an account of a bituminous lake in St. Vincent, which was afterwards published in the Philosophical Transactions for that year. In 1791 he went into Guiana on a botanising expedition; the plants he obtained being sent to Banks, are now in the herbarium of the British Museum. The Society of Arts voted him a silver medal in 1798 for a paper upon the plants in the garden at St. Vincent. He contemplated the production of a flora of the Caribee islands, some sheets of which he sent to Banks; but this project was never carried out. He resigned his post in July 1811, and died on 8 Sept. in the same year.
[Loudon's Gardener's Mag. i. 194 (1826); Banks, Correspondence (MS.), 3 May 1789, and 30 March 1796.]
ANDERSON, ANDREW (d. 1861), the ‘champion draught-player of Scotland,’ was a stocking weaver by trade, and continued to work at his business until within a short period of his death, which occurred at Braidwood, near Carluke, Lanarkshire, 1 March, 1861 . He published ‘The Game of Draughts simplified and illustrated with practical diagrams,’ Lanark, 1848; second edition, Glasgow, 1852—a work which is regarded as an authority on the subject of which it treats. A third edition, revised and extended by Robert McCulloch, was published at Glasgow and New York in 1878.
[Gent. Mag. ccx. 472; Introduction to third edition of the Game of Draughts.]
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ANDERSON, ANTHONY (d. 1593), theological writer and preacher, was, according to Tanner, a native of Lancashire, and was for many years rector of Medbourne, in Leicestershire. According to the parish register he was presented to the benefice in 1573, and held it until 1593, the date of his death. Early in 1587 Anderson was appointed to the vicarage of Stepney near London, and to the rectory of Denge in Essex, both of which he appears to have held in conjunction with his living in Leicestershire (Newcourt, Repertorium (1708), i. 740, ii. 212).
