A curious misattribution: the early history of ‘Simson's line’

Extract

When William Wynne Willson died in the summer of 2010 he left behind an incomplete text covering a number of geometrical topics, including the so-called ‘Simson line’. Geoff Wain, who was completing and editing the text with a view to possible publication, sent me a copy. One chapter, entitled ‘Whose line is it anyway?’ contains the following paragraph.

‘In 1799 the Scottish mathematician William Wallace … published a geometric theorem. Nowadays this result is known as ‘Simson's line’. It is not clear why it should have this name as Robert Simson, another Scottish mathematician, had died aged 80 in 1768, the year in which Wallace was born. Although Simson published a considerable body of mathematical writings … there seems to be no trace of this theorem among them.