Dougall was born in June 1867 in Kippen, a small village near Stirling, Scotland; his father, a watchmaker and postmaster, had nine children, among whom John was the eldest.
He left school at age 13 to become a post office worker, but a year later entered Glasgow University, from which he earned an M.A.
[2] His proposers were George Alexander Gibson, Sir Edmund Taylor Whittaker, Cargill Gilston Knott, and James Gordon Gray.
[1][3] At Blackie and Son, Dougall oversaw the publication of many advanced mathematics books, not only from English authors but also translations from writings in German and Italian by Richard Courant, Konrad Knopp, Tullio Levi-Civita, Vito Volterra, and others.
[6] Dougall translated Max Born's critical book Atomic Physics, and Émile Borel's Space and Time into English