We’ve started Taylor series in calc this week. Which is cool; I think I’m understanding what they are/how they work/why they’re important. But one thing I don’t know is who this Taylor fellow is.*

TO THE WIKIPEDIA-MOBILE!

So it looks like Brook Taylor was an early 18th century British mathematician. He did some work on the then newly described calculus, coming up with work Lagrange popularized in the late 1700s and, of course, came up with Taylor’s Theorem and Taylor series.

Here’s a cool demonstration of Taylor series approximation for various trig functions.

Edit: OH GODS HE STUDIED UNDER KEILL. Why, Taylor, whyyyyy?!

Edit 2: he was on the Royal Society committee set to hear Newton’s claims against Leibniz, too! Whaaaaat.

*I wish more teachers gave at least brief little intros on the people who come up with all this cool stuff. Especially when we’re learning about something expressly NAMED after someone.