George Atwood was born in 1745. he went to Westminster school and graduated from Trinity College in Cambridge in 1769 after which he stayed and taught mathematics there. In 1776 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.
William Pitt, British Prime Minister and one of Atwood's former students, gave Atwood a position as a personal secretary and an office in the Treasury.

Atwood's secular accomplishments include a book on on Newtonian mechanics, A Treatise on the Rectilinear Motion, published in 1784 In it, he introduces Atwood's Machine, used to demonstrate for the first time the laws of uniformly accelerated motion of a free-falling body due to gravity.
He also did work of the theories of ship stability as well as the engineering of arches and bridges.
He was awarded the Copley Medal of the Royal Society.
(The Copley Medal was established by Sir Geoffrey Copley and is the most prestigious award give by the Royal Society of London. Other recipients include Ben Franklin, Albert Einstein and Max Planc)
   As far a chess goes, Atwood was a very good amateur. He contested Philidor in many games, but most importantly, he preserved some of them, an unusual practice at that time. He also has the distinction to have been Philidor's opponent in the last game he played - at Parsloe's Club in 1795 - before he (Philidor) died. He was also onetime editor of The Philidorian.
           Atwood's Machine


 George Atwood died in 1807