Robert Heath (mathematician)

Heath was a captain in the British Army, and was described late in life as a "half-pay captain of invalids". For a time he served with his regiment in the Scilly Isles. He tried to establish a Palladium Society, under his own control. ==''The Ladies' Diary''==

Heath is best known as a contributor to ''The Ladies' Diary, from 1737. He was taken onto the staff, and proposed the prize essays for 1739, 1740, 1742, 1746, and 1748. When Henry Beighton, editor of the Diary'', died in October 1743, the proprietors, the Stationers' Company, allowed Beighton's widow to run it with Heath as her deputy. In that capacity Heath exercised full editorial control from 1744 to 1753, and continued to write under his own and assumed names. who like Emerson was a contributor to the Diary, inserted in his Mathematical Exercises (1750–3) a defence of Simpson against Heath, signed "Honestus". In 1753 the Stationers' Company dismissed Heath and installed Simpson in the editorial chair. ==Works==

John Holmes and his Greek grammar were attacked by Heath and Robert Hankinson in a controversy from the period 1738–40. Holmes wrote in his own defence, and had support from Thomas Simpson. Heath also published on the longitude problem. He had a reputation for indecent writing and innuendo in the Town and Country Magazine and ''The Rambler's Magazine''. While editor of the ''Ladies' Diary, Heath started in 1749 a journal on similar lines of his own account, The Palladium, which then ran for nearly 30 years, to 1778, under changing titles. It was said that he poached for it better contributions sent to him as editor of the Diary''. • ''The Ladies' Chronologer, No. I. 1754 (amalgamated with the Palladium'' of 1755). • ''The Ladies' Philosopher'', No. I. 1752, II. 1753, III. 1754. • Astronomia Accurata; or the Royal Astronomer and Navigator, 1760. • General and Particular Account of the Annular Eclipse of the Sun which happened on Sunday, April 1, 1764. ==Notes==