Colin Maclaurin was a Scottish

Scottish people

The Scottish people , or Scots, are a nation and ethnic group native to Scotland. Historically they emerged from an amalgamation of the Picts and Gaels, incorporating neighbouring Britons to the south as well as invading Germanic peoples such as the Anglo-Saxons and the Norse.In modern use,...

 mathematician

Mathematician

A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with quantity, structure, space, and change....

 who made important contributions to geometry and algebra. The Maclaurin series, a special case of the Taylor series

Taylor series

In mathematics, a Taylor series is a representation of a function as an infinite sum of terms that are calculated from the values of the function's derivatives at a single point....

, are named after him.

Due to changes in orthography

Orthography

The orthography of a language specifies a standardized way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example Kurdish, Uyghur, Serbian or Inuktitut, there can be more than one orthography...

 since that time (his name was originally rendered as e.g. "M'Laurine"), his surname is alternatively written MacLaurin. In Gaelic the name is "Cailean MacLabhruinn", which is literally 'Colin, the son of Laurence.'
Maclaurin was born in Kilmodan

Kilmodan

The parish of Kilmodan is situated in Argyll and Bute, Scotland. It includes the valley of Glendaruel and surrounding areas, with Kilmodan Church located in the Clachan of Glendaruel. The alternative historical spelling, Kilmadan, is no longer used....

, Argyll

Argyll

Argyll , archaically Argyle , is a region of western Scotland corresponding with most of the part of ancient Dál Riata that was located on the island of Great Britain, and in a historical context can be used to mean the entire western coast between the Mull of Kintyre and Cape Wrath...

.