John Arbuthnot John Arbuthnot FRS was a Scottish doctor, comedian, and scholar who lived in London. He was born on April 29, 1667, and died on February 27, 1735. He was often just called "Dr. Arbuthnot." People remember him for his work in mathematics, for being a member of the Scriblerus Club (where he inspired Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels book III and Alexander Pope's Peri Bathous, Or the Art of Sinking in Poetry, Memoirs of Martin Scriblerus, and maybe even The Dunciad), and for making up the character of John Bull. In the middle of his life, Arbuthnot complained about the work of people like Edmund Curll who wrote and paid for biographies of authors as soon as they died. He said, "Biography is one of the new terrors of death," which makes it hard to write a biography of Arbuthnot because he didn't want to leave records. Joseph Spence was told by Alexander Pope that Arbuthnot let his young children play with and even burn his papers. Throughout his career, Arbuthnot was very humble and friendly, and his friends often said that he didn't take enough credit for his own work. Read More Read Less