Science & Mathematics

.Patrich Murdoch. Mercator’s Sailing, Applied to the True Figure of the Earth. London: 1741.

By good luck, the Clark was able to buy both the original English version and the French translation of Patrick Murdoch’s only published book. Murdoch was a devoted Newtonian, and planned a complete edition of Newton’s works, until old age forced him to abandon the project. He was a good friend of the poet James Thomson, who called him (in a poem) “a little, round, fat, oily man of God.” (With friends like that…..).