Leslie Sir John

Leslie, Sir John (1766-1832), natural philosopher, was educated at St.Andrews and Edinburgh, his expenses being paid by the Chancellor, Lord Kinnoull. He abandoned the notion of taking Orders, and spent two years as a tutor in Virginia, and from 1790 onwards continued both to take pupils and to prosecute his own scientific researches. In 1793 he translated Button's Natural History of Birds, and in 1804 obtained the Rumford Medal of the Royal Society for his Experimental Inquiry into the Nature and Propayation of Heat. Next year he was appointed mathematical professor at Edinburgh, and held it for fourteen years, exchanging it in 1819 for the chair of natural philosophy. In 1832, the year of his death, he was created a Knight of the Guelphic Order.