William Emerson English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 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....

, was born at Hurworth, near Darlington

Darlington

Darlington is a market town in the Borough of Darlington, part of the ceremonial county of County Durham, England. It lies on the small River Skerne, a tributary of the River Tees, not far from the main river. It is the main population centre in the borough, with a population of 97,838 as of 2001...

, where his father, Dudley Emerson, also a mathematician, taught a school. William himself had a small estate in Weardale called Castle Gate situated not far from Eastgate where he would repair to work throughout the Summer on projects as disparate as stonemasonry and watchmaking.
Unsuccessful as a teacher, he devoted himself entirely to studious retirement. Possessed of remarkable energy and forthrightness of speech, Emerson published many works which are singularly free from errata.

In The Principles of Mechanics (1754) he shows a wind-powered vehicle in which the vertically-mounted propeller gives direct power to the front wheels via a system of cogs. In mechanics

Mechanics

Mechanics is the branch of physics concerned with the behavior of physical bodies when subjected to forces or displacements, and the subsequent effects of the bodies on their environment....

 he never advanced a proposition which he had not previously tested in practice, nor published an invention without first proving its effects by a model. He was skilled in the science of music

Music

Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...

, the theory of sounds, and the ancient and modern scales; but he never attained any excellence as a performer. He died on 20 May 1782 at his native village, where his gravestone bears epitaphs in Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

 and Hebrew.

Emerson dressed in old clothes and his manners were uncouth. He wore his shirt back to front and his legs wrapped in sacking so as not to scorch them as he sat over the fire. He declined an offer to become FRS because it would cost too much after all the expense of farthing candles he had been put to in the course of his life of study. Emerson rode regularly into Darlington on a horse like Don Quixote's, led by a hired small boy. In old age, plagued by the stone, he would alternately pray and curse, wishing his soul 'could shake off the rags of mortality without such a clitter-me-clatter.'

Like his fellow County Durham

County Durham

County Durham is a ceremonial county and unitary district in north east England. The county town is Durham. The largest settlement in the ceremonial county is the town of Darlington...

 savant John Bird

John Bird (astronomer)

John Bird , the great mathematical instrument maker, was born at Bishop Auckland. He worked in London for Jeremiah Sisson, and by 1745 he had his own business in the Strand. Bird was commissioned to make a brass quadrant 8 feet across for the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, where it is still...

 Emerson makes an appearance in Mason and Dixon by Thomas Pynchon

Thomas Pynchon

Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr. is an American novelist. For his most praised novel, Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon received the National Book Award, and is regularly cited as a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature...

Emerson’s works include:

• The Doctrine of Fluxions (1748)
• The Projection of the Sphere, Orthographic, Stereographic and Gnomical (1749)
• The Elements of Trigonometry (1749)
• The Principles of Mechanics (1754)
• A Treatise of Navigation (1755)
• A Treatise of Algebra, in two books (1765)
• The Arithmetic of Infinites, and the Differential Method, illustrated by Examples (1767)
• Mechanics, or the Doctrine of Motion (1769)
• The Elements of Optics, in four books (1768)
• A System of Astronomy (1769)
• The Laws of Centripetal and Centrifugal Force (1769)
• The Mathematical Principles of Geography (1770)
• Tracts (1770)
• Cyclomathesis, or an Easy Introduction to the several branches of the Mathematics (1770), in ten volumes
• A Short Comment on Sir Isaac Newton’s Principia; to which is added, A Defence of Sir Isaac against the objections that have been made to several parts of his works (1770)
• A Miscellaneous Treatise containing several Mathematical Subjects (1776).