Description
John Leslie (1766-1832) was a man whose life included involvement with religion, mathematics, politics and science. He was described in a student magazine as “short and fat with a florid face”. He had a great will and fought for his beliefs. During his life he was awarded the Rumford medal for his work on heat, but he battled politics and the Church just to get a job. He started off on the road to joining the Church and ended up as an atheist at the end of his life. When he went to study divinity at the University of Edinburgh, he instead attended lectures on mathematics, philosophy and science.

He clashed with the Church over his atheism when attempting to take the post of Chair of natural philosophy in St Andrew's. Blocked from that post and another one at Glasgow, he eventually, however, did become professor of mathematics and later natural philosophy at Edinburgh University. He died in 1832 of a worsening fever.

Perhaps though, the best indication of his force of will is when he wrote to the Lord Chancellor asking for a knighthood and was granted it. What type of man would have the temerity to do that?