Olinthus Gregory 

Olinthus Gregory (1774-1841) was originally from Yaxley, Huntingtonshire. He published Lessons Astronomical and Philosophical in 1796, an early indicator of his future prominence in the field of mathematics. That same year he arrived in Cambridge to work as sub-editor of Benjamin Flower’s Cambridge Intelligencer. He attended at St. Andrew’s Street and was baptized there, becoming a close friend of Robert Hall. He also operated a bookshop and a school, during which time he hired Newton Bosworth as his assistant. In 1803 he was became an instructor of mathematics at the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, leaving Cambridge and turning his school over to Bosworth. In 1821 he was appointed professor of mathematics, having established himself as a preeminent authority by that time. By the time he retired in 1838, he had composed several scientific treatises, written about half the scientific articles for the encyclopedic work, Pantalogia (1808-1813), served as a member of numerous philosophical and scientific societies, and become widely known for his writings in Christian apologetics, such as Letters on the Evidences of Christianity (1811). For many years Gregory worshiped with the Baptist church at Maze Pond, Southwark. As the writer of his obituary in the Baptist Magazine writes, though Baptist tenets “were immovably fixed in his creed, and adopted after most extensive research and patient thought, yet no man ever held them with more pure and genial catholicity of feeling.” He frequently attended Anglican services in his later years, but was always an adherent of the principles of civil and religious liberty. He was widely known for his edition of The Works of Robert Hall (6 vols; 1832). Along with Joseph Hughes, F. A. Cox, and others, he was instrumental in the founding of University College, London University. See Baptist Magazine 33 (1841), 129-130, 268-273; DEB.