STIRLING, JAMES

born 1692, Garden, Stirling, Scot. died Dec. 5, 1770, Edinburgh byname Stirling The Venetian Scottish mathematician who contributed important advances to the theory of infinite series and infinitesimal calculus. Expelled from the University of Oxford for corresponding with the Jacobites (supporters of Stuart claims to the throne), Stirling in 1715 went to Venice to study. There he uncovered the trade secrets of the Venetian glassmakers and later published A Description of a Machine to Blow Fire by Fall of Water (1745). Stirling returned to London in 1725 and the following year was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of London. In 1735 he became manager of the Scots Mining Company, Leadhills. He published a supplement to Sir Isaac Newton's enumeration of 72 forms of the cubic curve, entitled Lineae Tertii Ordines Newtonianae, 8 vol. (1717; Newtonian Third Order Curves). His other publications include Methodus Differentialis sive Tractatus de Summatione et Interpolatione Serierum Infinitarum (1730; Differential Method with a Tract on Summation and Interpolation of Infinite Series) and On the Figure of the Earth, and On the Variation of the Force of Gravity at Its Surface (1735). A series expansion called Stirling's formula is named after him, though it was first derived by his countryman Abraham De Moivre.