McVey Napier - a 19th-century multitasker

I became interested in McVey Napier for two reasons. First of all, I was drawn by the name. McVey is uncommon enough as a surname but almost unknown as a Christian name. Secondly, not only did I share a name with him, but he was born in my home town of Kirkintilloch. These are self-indulgent reasons for investigating someone’s life, not scholarly ones, but we always need a starting point, and that was mine.

Napier is little-known today, perhaps because, despite mixing with many of the great figures of his day, he was a jack-of-all-trades, what I have described as a multitasker. He did many things well, but he wasn’t absolutely outstanding at anything; people with that kind of profile are rarely remembered. Yet there is also something rather modern about him besides the multitasking. It may