Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton | |
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Born | O.S. 25 December 1642][a] Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth, Lincolnshire, England | 4 January 1643 [
Died | 31 March 1727O.S. 20 March 1726][a] Kensington, Middlesex, Great Britain | (aged 84) [
Resting place | Westminster Abbey |
Education | Trinity College, Cambridge (B.A., 1665; M.A., 1668)[5] |
Known for | List |
Awards |
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Scientific career | |
Fields |
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Institutions | |
Academic advisors | |
Notable students | |
President of the Royal Society | |
In office 1703–1727 | |
Preceded by | John Somers |
Succeeded by | Hans Sloane |
Master of the Mint | |
In office 1699–1727 | |
1696–1699 | Warden of the Mint |
Preceded by | Thomas Neale |
Succeeded by | John Conduitt |
2nd Lucasian Professor of Mathematics | |
In office 1669–1702 | |
Preceded by | Isaac Barrow |
Succeeded by | William Whiston |
Personal details | |
Political party | Whig |
Signature | |
Sir Isaac Newton
In the Principia, Newton formulated the
Newton built the first practical reflecting telescope and developed a sophisticated theory of colour based on the observation that a prism separates white light into the colours of the visible spectrum. His work on light was collected in his highly influential book Opticks, published in 1704. He also formulated an empirical law of cooling, made the first theoretical calculation of the speed of sound, and introduced the notion of a Newtonian fluid. In addition to his work on calculus, as a mathematician Newton contributed to the study of power series, generalised the binomial theorem to non-integer exponents, developed a method for approximating the roots of a function, and classified most of the cubic plane curves.
Newton was a fellow of Trinity College and the second Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge. He was a devout but unorthodox Christian who privately rejected the doctrine of the Trinity. He refused to take holy orders in the Church of England, unlike most members of the Cambridge faculty of the day. Beyond his work on the mathematical sciences, Newton dedicated much of his time to the study of alchemy and biblical chronology, but most of his work in those areas remained unpublished until long after his death. Politically and personally tied to the Whig party, Newton served two brief terms as Member of Parliament for the University of Cambridge, in 1689–1690 and 1701–1702. He was knighted by Queen Anne in 1705 and spent the last three decades of his life in London, serving as Warden (1696–1699) and Master (1699–1727) of the Royal Mint, as well as president of the Royal Society (1703–1727).
Early life
Isaac Newton was born (according to the
The King's School
From the age of about twelve until he was seventeen, Newton was educated at The King's School in Grantham, which taught Latin and Ancient Greek and probably imparted a significant foundation of mathematics.[21] He was removed from school and returned to Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth by October 1659. His mother, widowed for the second time, attempted to make him a farmer, an occupation he hated.[22] Henry Stokes, master at The King's School, persuaded his mother to send him back to school. Motivated partly by a desire for revenge against a schoolyard bully, he became the top-ranked student,[23] distinguishing himself mainly by building sundials and models of windmills.[24]
University of Cambridge
In June 1661, Newton was admitted to
Although he had been undistinguished as a Cambridge student,
In April 1667, Newton returned to the University of Cambridge, and in October he was elected as a fellow of Trinity.[31][32] Fellows were required to take holy orders and be ordained as Anglican priests, although this was not enforced in the Restoration years, and an assertion of conformity to the Church of England was sufficient. He made the commitment that "I will either set Theology as the object of my studies and will take holy orders when the time prescribed by these statutes [7 years] arrives, or I will resign from the college."[33] Up until this point he had not thought much about religion and had twice signed his agreement to the Thirty-nine Articles, the basis of Church of England doctrine. By 1675 the issue could not be avoided, and by then his unconventional views stood in the way.[34]
His academic work impressed the
Newton was elected a
Mid-life
Calculus
Newton's work has been said "to distinctly advance every branch of mathematics then studied".[36] His work on the subject, usually referred to as fluxions or calculus, seen in a manuscript of October 1666, is now published among Newton's mathematical papers.[37] His work De analysi per aequationes numero terminorum infinitas, sent by Isaac Barrow to John Collins in June 1669, was identified by Barrow in a letter sent to Collins that August as the work "of an extraordinary genius and proficiency in these things".[38] Newton later became involved in a dispute with Leibniz over priority in the development of calculus. Most modern historians believe that Newton and Leibniz developed calculus independently, although with very different mathematical notations. However, it is established that Newton came to develop calculus much earlier than Leibniz.[10][11][39] Leibniz's notation and "differential Method", nowadays recognised as much more convenient notations, were adopted by continental European mathematicians, and after 1820 or so, also by British mathematicians.[citation needed]
His work extensively uses calculus in geometric form based on limiting values of the ratios of vanishingly small quantities: in the Principia itself, Newton gave demonstration of this under the name of "the method of first and last ratios"[40] and explained why he put his expositions in this form,[41] remarking also that "hereby the same thing is performed as by the method of indivisibles."[42] Because of this, the Principia has been called "a book dense with the theory and application of the infinitesimal calculus" in modern times[43] and in Newton's time "nearly all of it is of this calculus."[44] His use of methods involving "one or more orders of the infinitesimally small" is present in his De motu corporum in gyrum of 1684[45] and in his papers on motion "during the two decades preceding 1684".[46]
Newton had been reluctant to publish his calculus because he feared controversy and criticism.[47] He was close to the Swiss mathematician Nicolas Fatio de Duillier. In 1691, Duillier started to write a new version of Newton's Principia, and corresponded with Leibniz.[48] In 1693, the relationship between Duillier and Newton deteriorated and the book was never completed.[49] Starting in 1699, other members[who?] of the Royal Society accused Leibniz of plagiarism.[50] The dispute then broke out in full force in 1711 when the Royal Society proclaimed in a study that it was Newton who was the true discoverer and labelled Leibniz a fraud; it was later found that Newton wrote the study's concluding remarks on Leibniz. Thus began the bitter controversy which marred the lives of both Newton and Leibniz until the latter's death in 1716.[51]
Newton is generally credited with the
Optics
In 1666, Newton observed that the spectrum of colours exiting a
From 1670 to 1672, Newton lectured on optics.
He showed that coloured light does not change its properties by separating out a coloured beam and shining it on various objects, and that regardless of whether reflected, scattered, or transmitted, the light remains the same colour. Thus, he observed that colour is the result of objects interacting with already-coloured light rather than objects generating the colour themselves. This is known as Newton's theory of colour.[59]
From this work, he concluded that the lens of any refracting telescope would suffer from the dispersion of light into colours (chromatic aberration). As a proof of the concept, he constructed a telescope using reflective mirrors instead of lenses as the objective to bypass that problem.[60][61] Building the design, the first known functional reflecting telescope, today known as a Newtonian telescope,[61] involved solving the problem of a suitable mirror material and shaping technique. Newton ground his own mirrors out of a custom composition of highly reflective speculum metal, using Newton's rings to judge the quality of the optics for his telescopes. In late 1668,[62] he was able to produce this first reflecting telescope. It was about eight inches long and it gave a clearer and larger image. In 1671, the Royal Society asked for a demonstration of his reflecting telescope.[63] Their interest encouraged him to publish his notes, Of Colours,[64] which he later expanded into the work Opticks. When Robert Hooke criticised some of Newton's ideas, Newton was so offended that he withdrew from public debate. Newton and Hooke had brief exchanges in 1679–80, when Hooke, appointed to manage the Royal Society's correspondence, opened up a correspondence intended to elicit contributions from Newton to Royal Society transactions,[65] which had the effect of stimulating Newton to work out a proof that the elliptical form of planetary orbits would result from a centripetal force inversely proportional to the square of the radius vector. But the two men remained generally on poor terms until Hooke's death.[66]
Newton argued that light is composed of particles or corpuscles, which were refracted by accelerating into a denser medium. He verged on soundlike waves to explain the repeated pattern of reflection and transmission by thin films (Opticks Bk. II, Props. 12), but still retained his theory of 'fits' that disposed corpuscles to be reflected or transmitted (Props.13). However, later physicists favoured a purely wavelike explanation of light to account for the
In his Hypothesis of Light of 1675, Newton posited the existence of the
In 1704, Newton published Opticks, in which he expounded his corpuscular theory of light. He considered light to be made up of extremely subtle corpuscles, that ordinary matter was made of grosser corpuscles and speculated that through a kind of alchemical transmutation "Are not gross Bodies and Light convertible into one another, ... and may not Bodies receive much of their Activity from the Particles of Light which enter their Composition?"[69] Newton also constructed a primitive form of a frictional electrostatic generator, using a glass globe.[70]
In his book Opticks, Newton was the first to show a diagram using a prism as a beam expander, and also the use of multiple-prism arrays.[71] Some 278 years after Newton's discussion, multiple-prism beam expanders became central to the development of narrow-linewidth tunable lasers. Also, the use of these prismatic beam expanders led to the multiple-prism dispersion theory.[71]
Subsequent to Newton, much has been amended. Young and Fresnel discarded Newton's particle theory in favour of Huygens' wave theory to show that colour is the visible manifestation of light's wavelength. Science also slowly came to realise the difference between perception of colour and mathematisable optics. The German poet and scientist, Goethe, could not shake the Newtonian foundation but "one hole Goethe did find in Newton's armour, ... Newton had committed himself to the doctrine that refraction without colour was impossible. He, therefore, thought that the object-glasses of telescopes must forever remain imperfect, achromatism and refraction being incompatible. This inference was proved by Dollond to be wrong."[72]
Gravity
Newton had been developing his theory of gravitation as far back as 1665.
The Principia was published on 5 July 1687 with encouragement and financial help from Halley. In this work, Newton stated the three universal laws of motion. Together, these laws describe the relationship between any object, the forces acting upon it and the resulting motion, laying the foundation for classical mechanics. They contributed to many advances during the Industrial Revolution which soon followed and were not improved upon for more than 200 years. Many of these advances continue to be the underpinnings of non-relativistic technologies in the modern world. He used the Latin word gravitas (weight) for the effect that would become known as gravity, and defined the law of universal gravitation.[76]
In the same work, Newton presented a calculus-like method of geometrical analysis using 'first and last ratios', gave the first analytical determination (based on
Newton made clear his
Newton's postulate of an invisible
With the Principia, Newton became internationally recognised.[82] He acquired a circle of admirers, including the Swiss-born mathematician Nicolas Fatio de Duillier.[83]
In 1710, Newton found 72 of the 78 "species" of cubic curves and categorised them into four types.[84] In 1717, and probably with Newton's help, James Stirling proved that every cubic was one of these four types. Newton also claimed that the four types could be obtained by plane projection from one of them, and this was proved in 1731, four years after his death.[85]
Later life
Royal Mint
In the 1690s, Newton wrote a number of
Newton was also a member of the Parliament of England for Cambridge University in 1689 and 1701, but according to some accounts his only comments were to complain about a cold draught in the chamber and request that the window be closed.[87] He was, however, noted by Cambridge diarist Abraham de la Pryme to have rebuked students who were frightening locals by claiming that a house was haunted.[88]
Newton moved to London to take up the post of warden of the
As Warden, and afterwards as Master, of the Royal Mint, Newton estimated that 20 percent of the coins taken in during the Great Recoinage of 1696 were counterfeit. Counterfeiting was high treason, punishable by the felon being hanged, drawn and quartered. Despite this, convicting even the most flagrant criminals could be extremely difficult, but Newton proved equal to the task.[91]
Disguised as a habitué of bars and taverns, he gathered much of that evidence himself.[92] For all the barriers placed to prosecution, and separating the branches of government, English law still had ancient and formidable customs of authority. Newton had himself made a justice of the peace in all the home counties. A draft letter regarding the matter is included in Newton's personal first edition of Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, which he must have been amending at the time.[93] Then he conducted more than 100 cross-examinations of witnesses, informers, and suspects between June 1698 and Christmas 1699. Newton successfully prosecuted 28 coiners.[94]
Newton was made president of the Royal Society in 1703 and an associate of the French Académie des Sciences. In his position at the Royal Society, Newton made an enemy of John Flamsteed, the Astronomer Royal, by prematurely publishing Flamsteed's Historia Coelestis Britannica, which Newton had used in his studies.[96]
Knighthood
In April 1705, Queen Anne knighted Newton during a royal visit to Trinity College, Cambridge. The knighthood is likely to have been motivated by political considerations connected with the parliamentary election in May 1705, rather than any recognition of Newton's scientific work or services as Master of the Mint.[97] Newton was the second scientist to be knighted, after Francis Bacon.[98]
As a result of a report written by Newton on 21 September 1717 to the Lords Commissioners of His Majesty's Treasury, the bimetallic relationship between gold coins and silver coins was changed by royal proclamation on 22 December 1717, forbidding the exchange of gold guineas for more than 21 silver shillings.[99] This inadvertently resulted in a silver shortage as silver coins were used to pay for imports, while exports were paid for in gold, effectively moving Britain from the silver standard to its first gold standard. It is a matter of debate as to whether he intended to do this or not.[100] It has been argued that Newton conceived of his work at the Mint as a continuation of his alchemical work.[101]
Newton was invested in the South Sea Company and lost some £20,000 (£4.4 million in 2020[102]) when it collapsed in around 1720.[103]
Toward the end of his life, Newton took up residence at Cranbury Park, near Winchester, with his niece and her husband, until his death.[104] His half-niece, Catherine Barton,[105] served as his hostess in social affairs at his house on Jermyn Street in London; he was her "very loving Uncle",[106] according to his letter to her when she was recovering from smallpox.
Death
Newton died in his sleep in London on 20 March 1727 (OS 20 March 1726; NS 31 March 1727).[a] He was given a ceremonial funeral, attended by nobles, scientists, and philosophers, and was buried in Westminster Abbey among kings and queens. He was the first scientist to be buried in the abbey.[107] Voltaire may have been present at his funeral.[108] A bachelor, he had divested much of his estate to relatives during his last years, and died intestate.[109] His papers went to John Conduitt and Catherine Barton.[110]
Shortly after his death, a plaster
Newton's hair was posthumously examined and found to contain mercury, probably resulting from his alchemical pursuits. Mercury poisoning could explain Newton's eccentricity in late life.[109]
Personality
Although it was claimed that he was once engaged,[b] Newton never married. The French writer and philosopher Voltaire, who was in London at the time of Newton's funeral, said that he "was never sensible to any passion, was not subject to the common frailties of mankind, nor had any commerce with women—a circumstance which was assured me by the physician and surgeon who attended him in his last moments.”[116] There exists a widespread belief that Newton died a virgin, and writers as diverse as mathematician Charles Hutton,[117] economist John Maynard Keynes,[118] and physicist Carl Sagan have commented on it.[119]
Newton had a close friendship with the Swiss mathematician
Newton was relatively modest about his achievements, writing in a letter to Robert Hooke in February 1676, "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."[124] Two writers think that the sentence, written at a time when Newton and Hooke were in dispute over optical discoveries, was an oblique attack on Hooke (said to have been short and hunchbacked), rather than—or in addition to—a statement of modesty.[125][126] On the other hand, the widely known proverb about standing on the shoulders of giants, published among others by seventeenth-century poet George Herbert (a former orator of the University of Cambridge and fellow of Trinity College) in his Jacula Prudentum (1651), had as its main point that "a dwarf on a giant's shoulders sees farther of the two", and so its effect as an analogy would place Newton himself rather than Hooke as the 'dwarf'.
In a later memoir, Newton wrote, "I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me."[127]
Theology
Religious views
Although born into an Anglican family, by his thirties Newton held a Christian faith that, had it been made public, would not have been considered orthodox by mainstream Christianity,[128] with one historian labelling him a heretic.[129]
By 1672, he had started to record his theological researches in notebooks which he showed to no one and which have only been available for public examination since 1972.
Newton tried unsuccessfully to obtain one of the two fellowships that exempted the holder from the ordination requirement. At the last moment in 1675 he received a dispensation from the government that excused him and all future holders of the Lucasian chair.[133]
In Newton's eyes, worshipping
Although the laws of motion and universal gravitation became Newton's best-known discoveries, he warned against using them to view the Universe as a mere machine, as if akin to a great clock. He said, "So then gravity may put the planets into motion, but without the Divine Power it could never put them into such a circulating motion, as they have about the sun".[136]
Along with his scientific fame, Newton's studies of the Bible and of the early
He believed in a rationally
Newton's position was vigorously defended by his follower
Scholars long debated whether Newton disputed the doctrine of the Trinity. His first biographer, David Brewster, who compiled his manuscripts, interpreted Newton as questioning the veracity of some passages used to support the Trinity, but never denying the doctrine of the Trinity as such.[144] In the twentieth century, encrypted manuscripts written by Newton and bought by John Maynard Keynes (among others) were deciphered[68] and it became known that Newton did indeed reject Trinitarianism.[129]
Religious thought
Newton and
The attacks made against pre-Enlightenment "magical thinking", and the mystical elements of Christianity, were given their foundation with Boyle's mechanical conception of the universe. Newton gave Boyle's ideas their completion through mathematical proofs and, perhaps more importantly, was very successful in popularising them.[147]
Alchemy
Newton was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians, the last of the Babylonians and Sumerians, the last great mind which looked out on the visible and intellectual world with the same eyes as those who began to build our intellectual inheritance rather less than 10,000 years ago. Isaac Newton, a posthumous child born with no father on Christmas Day, 1642, was the last wonderchild to whom the Magi could do sincere and appropriate homage.
–John Maynard Keynes, "Newton, the Man"[148]
Of an estimated ten million words of writing in Newton's papers, about one million deal with alchemy. Many of Newton's writings on alchemy are copies of other manuscripts, with his own annotations.[110] Alchemical texts mix artisanal knowledge with philosophical speculation, often hidden behind layers of wordplay, allegory, and imagery to protect craft secrets.[149] Some of the content contained in Newton's papers could have been considered heretical by the church.[110]
In 1888, after spending sixteen years cataloguing Newton's papers, Cambridge University kept a small number and returned the rest to the Earl of Portsmouth. In 1936, a descendant offered the papers for sale at Sotheby's.[150] The collection was broken up and sold for a total of about £9,000.[151] John Maynard Keynes was one of about three dozen bidders who obtained part of the collection at auction. Keynes went on to reassemble an estimated half of Newton's collection of papers on alchemy before donating his collection to Cambridge University in 1946.[110][150][152]
All of Newton's known writings on alchemy are currently being put online in a project undertaken by Indiana University: "The Chymistry of Isaac Newton"[153] and summarised in a book.[154][155]
Newton's fundamental contributions to science include the quantification of gravitational attraction, the discovery that white light is actually a mixture of immutable spectral colors, and the formulation of the calculus. Yet there is another, more mysterious side to Newton that is imperfectly known, a realm of activity that spanned some thirty years of his life, although he kept it largely hidden from his contemporaries and colleagues. We refer to Newton's involvement in the discipline of alchemy, or as it was often called in seventeenth-century England, "chymistry."[153]
In June 2020, two unpublished pages of Newton's notes on Jan Baptist van Helmont's book on plague, De Peste,[156] were being auctioned online by Bonhams. Newton's analysis of this book, which he made in Cambridge while protecting himself from London's 1665–1666 infection, is the most substantial written statement he is known to have made about the plague, according to Bonhams. As far as the therapy is concerned, Newton writes that "the best is a toad suspended by the legs in a chimney for three days, which at last vomited up earth with various insects in it, on to a dish of yellow wax, and shortly after died. Combining powdered toad with the excretions and serum made into lozenges and worn about the affected area drove away the contagion and drew out the poison".[157]
Legacy
Fame
The mathematician
Nature, and Nature's laws lay hid in night.
God said, Let Newton be! and all was light.
But this was not allowed to be inscribed in the monument. The epitaph in the monument is as follows:[159]
H. S. E. ISAACUS NEWTON Eques Auratus, / Qui, animi vi prope divinâ, / Planetarum Motus, Figuras, / Cometarum semitas, Oceanique Aestus. Suâ Mathesi facem praeferente / Primus demonstravit: / Radiorum Lucis dissimilitudines, / Colorumque inde nascentium proprietates, / Quas nemo antea vel suspicatus erat, pervestigavit. / Naturae, Antiquitatis, S. Scripturae, / Sedulus, sagax, fidus Interpres / Dei O. M. Majestatem Philosophiâ asseruit, / Evangelij Simplicitatem Moribus expressit. / Sibi gratulentur Mortales, / Tale tantumque exstitisse / HUMANI GENERIS DECUS. / NAT. XXV DEC. A.D. MDCXLII. OBIIT. XX. MAR. MDCCXXVI,
which can be translated as follows:[159]
Here is buried Isaac Newton, Knight, who by a strength of mind almost divine, and mathematical principles peculiarly his own, explored the course and figures of the planets, the paths of comets, the tides of the sea, the dissimilarities in rays of light, and, what no other scholar has previously imagined, the properties of the colours thus produced. Diligent, sagacious and faithful, in his expositions of nature, antiquity and the holy Scriptures, he vindicated by his philosophy the majesty of God mighty and good, and expressed the simplicity of the Gospel in his manners. Mortals rejoice that there has existed such and so great an ornament of the human race! He was born on 25th December 1642, and died on 20th March 1726.
In a 2005 survey of members of Britain's Royal Society (formerly headed by Newton) asking who had the greater effect on the history of science, Newton or Albert Einstein, the members deemed Newton to have made the greater overall contribution.[160] In 1999, an opinion poll of 100 of the day's leading physicists voted Einstein the "greatest physicist ever," with Newton the runner-up, while a parallel survey of rank-and-file physicists by the site PhysicsWeb gave the top spot to Newton.[161][162] New Scientist called Newton "the supreme genius and most enigmatic character in the history of science".[14] Einstein kept a picture of Newton on his study wall alongside ones of Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell.[163]
The SI derived unit of force is named the newton in his honour.
Woolsthorpe Manor is a Grade I listed building by Historic England through being his birthplace and "where he discovered gravity and developed his theories regarding the refraction of light".[164]
In 1816, a tooth said to have belonged to Newton was sold for £730[165] in London to an aristocrat who had it set in a ring.[166] Guinness World Records 2002 classified it as the most valuable tooth in the world, which would value approximately £25,000 (US$35,700) in late 2001.[166] Who bought it and who currently has it has not been disclosed.
Apple incident
Newton himself often told the story that he was inspired to formulate his theory of gravitation by watching the fall of an apple from a tree.[167][168] The story is believed to have passed into popular knowledge after being related by Catherine Barton, Newton's niece, to Voltaire.[169] Voltaire then wrote in his Essay on Epic Poetry (1727), "Sir Isaac Newton walking in his gardens, had the first thought of his system of gravitation, upon seeing an apple falling from a tree."[170][171]
Although it has been said that the apple story is a myth and that he did not arrive at his theory of gravity at any single moment,[172] acquaintances of Newton (such as William Stukeley, whose manuscript account of 1752 has been made available by the Royal Society) do in fact confirm the incident, though not the apocryphal version that the apple actually hit Newton's head. Stukeley recorded in his Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton's Life a conversation with Newton in Kensington on 15 April 1726:[173][174][175]
we went into the garden, & drank thea under the shade of some appletrees, only he, & myself. amidst other discourse, he told me, he was just in the same situation, as when formerly, the notion of gravitation came into his mind. "why should that apple always descend perpendicularly to the ground," thought he to him self: occasion'd by the fall of an apple, as he sat in a comtemplative mood: "why should it not go sideways, or upwards? but constantly to the earths centre? assuredly, the reason is, that the earth draws it. there must be a drawing power in matter. & the sum of the drawing power in the matter of the earth must be in the earths center, not in any side of the earth. therefore dos this apple fall perpendicularly, or toward the center. if matter thus draws matter; it must be in proportion of its quantity. therefore the apple draws the earth, as well as the earth draws the apple."
John Conduitt, Newton's assistant at the Royal Mint and husband of Newton's niece, also described the event when he wrote about Newton's life:[176]
In the year 1666 he retired again from Cambridge to his mother in Lincolnshire. Whilst he was pensively meandering in a garden it came into his thought that the power of gravity (which brought an apple from a tree to the ground) was not limited to a certain distance from earth, but that this power must extend much further than was usually thought. Why not as high as the Moon said he to himself & if so, that must influence her motion & perhaps retain her in her orbit, whereupon he fell a calculating what would be the effect of that supposition.
It is known from his notebooks that Newton was grappling in the late 1660s with the idea that terrestrial gravity extends, in an inverse-square proportion, to the Moon; however, it took him two decades to develop the full-fledged theory.[177] The question was not whether gravity existed, but whether it extended so far from Earth that it could also be the force holding the Moon to its orbit. Newton showed that if the force decreased as the inverse square of the distance, one could indeed calculate the Moon's orbital period, and get good agreement. He guessed the same force was responsible for other orbital motions, and hence named it "universal gravitation".
Various trees are claimed to be "the" apple tree which Newton describes. The
Commemorations
Newton's monument (1731) can be seen in
Here is buried Isaac Newton, Knight, who by a strength of mind almost divine, and mathematical principles peculiarly his own, explored the course and figures of the planets, the paths of comets, the tides of the sea, the dissimilarities in rays of light, and, what no other scholar has previously imagined, the properties of the colours thus produced. Diligent, sagacious and faithful, in his expositions of nature, antiquity and the holy Scriptures, he vindicated by his philosophy the majesty of God mighty and good, and expressed the simplicity of the Gospel in his manners. Mortals rejoice that there has existed such and so great an ornament of the human race! He was born on 25 December 1642, and died on 20 March 1726/7.
- —Translation from G. L. Smyth, The Monuments and Genii of St. Paul's Cathedral, and of Westminster Abbey (1826), ii, 703–704.[182]
From 1978 until 1988, an image of Newton designed by Harry Ecclestone appeared on Series D £1 banknotes issued by the Bank of England (the last £1 notes to be issued by the Bank of England). Newton was shown on the reverse of the notes holding a book and accompanied by a telescope, a prism and a map of the Solar System.[183]
A statue of Isaac Newton, looking at an apple at his feet, can be seen at the
The still-surviving farmhouse at Woolsthorpe By Colsterworth is a Grade I listed building by Historic England through being his birthplace and "where he discovered gravity and developed his theories regarding the refraction of light".[164]
The Enlightenment
Enlightenment philosophers chose a short history of scientific predecessors—Galileo, Boyle, and Newton principally—as the guides and guarantors of their applications of the singular concept of nature and natural law to every physical and social field of the day. In this respect, the lessons of history and the social structures built upon it could be discarded.[184]
It is held by European philosophers of the Enlightenment and by historians of the Enlightenment that Newton's publication of the
Works
Published in his lifetime
- De analysi per aequationes numero terminorum infinitas (1669, published 1711)[186]
- Of Natures Obvious Laws & Processes in Vegetation (unpublished, c. 1671–75)[187]
- De motu corporum in gyrum (1684)[188]
- Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687)[189]
- Scala graduum Caloris. Calorum Descriptiones & signa (1701)[190]
- Opticks (1704)[191]
- Reports as Master of the Mint (1701–1725)[192]
- Arithmetica Universalis (1707)[192]
Published posthumously
- De mundi systemate (The System of the World) (1728)[192]
- Optical Lectures (1728)[192]
- The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended (1728)[192]
- Observations on Daniel and The Apocalypse of St. John (1733)[192]
- Method of Fluxions (1671, published 1736)[193]
- An Historical Account of Two Notable Corruptions of Scripture (1754)[192]
See also
- Elements of the Philosophy of Newton, a book by Voltaire
- List of multiple discoveries: seventeenth century
- List of things named after Isaac Newton
- List of presidents of the Royal Society
References
Notes
- ^ Gregorian ("New Style") calendar in Roman Catholic Europe. At Newton's birth, Gregorian dates were ten days ahead of Julian dates; thus, his birth is recorded as taking place on 25 December 1642 Old Style, but it can be converted to a New Style (modern) date of 4 January 1643. By the time of his death, the difference between the calendars had increased to eleven days. Moreover, he died in the period after the start of the New Style year on 1 January but before that of the Old Style new year on 25 March. His death occurred on 20 March 1726, according to the Old Style calendar, but the year is usually adjusted to 1727. A full conversion to New Style gives the date 31 March 1727.[6][self-published source?]
- ^ This claim was made by William Stukeley in 1727, in a letter about Newton written to Richard Mead. Charles Hutton, who in the late eighteenth century collected oral traditions about earlier scientists, declared that there "do not appear to be any sufficient reason for his never marrying, if he had an inclination so to do. It is much more likely that he had a constitutional indifference to the state, and even to the sex in general."[115]
Citations
- ^ a b "Fellows of the Royal Society". London: Royal Society. Archived from the original on 16 March 2015.
- S2CID 144019197.
- ^ "Dictionary of Scientific Biography". Notes, No. 4. Archived from the original on 25 February 2005.
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Bibliography
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Further reading
Primary
- Newton, Isaac. The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. University of California Press, (1999)
- Brackenridge, J. Bruce. The Key to Newton's Dynamics: The Kepler Problem and the Principia: Containing an English Translation of Sections 1, 2, and 3 of Book One from the First (1687) Edition of Newton's Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, University of California Press (1996)
- Newton, Isaac. The Optical Papers of Isaac Newton. Vol. 1: The Optical Lectures, 1670–1672, Cambridge University Press (1984)
- Newton, Isaac. Opticks (4th ed. 1730) online edition
- Newton, I. (1952). Opticks, or A Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections & Colours of Light. New York: Dover Publications.
- Newton, I. Sir Isaac Newton's Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy and His System of the World, tr. A. Motte, rev. Florian Cajori. Berkeley: University of California Press (1934)
- ISBN 978-0-521-07740-8. – 8 volumes.
- Newton, Isaac. The correspondence of Isaac Newton, ed. H.W. Turnbull and others, 7 vols (1959–77)
- Newton's Philosophy of Nature: Selections from His Writings edited by H.S. Thayer (1953; online edition)
- Isaac Newton, Sir; J Edleston; Roger Cotes, Correspondence of Sir Isaac Newton and Professor Cotes, including letters of other eminent men, London, John W. Parker, West Strand; Cambridge, John Deighton (1850, Google Books)
- Maclaurin, C. (1748). An Account of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophical Discoveries, in Four Books. London: A. Millar and J. Nourse
- Newton, I. (1958). Isaac Newton's Papers and Letters on Natural Philosophy and Related Documents, eds. I.B. Cohen and R.E. Schofield. Cambridge: Harvard University Press
- Newton, I. (1962). The Unpublished Scientific Papers of Isaac Newton: A Selection from the Portsmouth Collection in the University Library, Cambridge, ed. A.R. Hall and M.B. Hall. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
- Newton, I. (1975). Isaac Newton's 'Theory of the Moon's Motion' (1702). London: Dawson
Alchemy
- Craig, John (1946). Newton at the Mint. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
- Craig, John (1953). "XII. Isaac Newton". The Mint: A History of the London Mint from A.D. 287 to 1948. ASIN B0000CIHG7.
- de Villamil, Richard (1931). Newton, the Man. London: G. D. Knox. – Preface by Albert Einstein. Reprinted by Johnson Reprint Corporation, New York (1972)
- Dobbs, B. J. T. (1975). The Foundations of Newton's Alchemy or "The Hunting of the Greene Lyon". Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- ISBN 978-0-393-00189-1. Keynes took a close interest in Newton and owned many of Newton's private papers.
- Stukeley, W. (1936). Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton's Life. London: Taylor and Francis. (edited by A.H. White; originally published in 1752)
- Trabue, J. "Ann and Arthur Storer of Calvert County, Maryland, Friends of Sir Isaac Newton," The American Genealogist 79 (2004): 13–27.
Religion
- Dobbs, Betty Jo Tetter. The Janus Faces of Genius: The Role of Alchemy in Newton's Thought. (1991), links the alchemy to Arianism
- Force, James E., and Richard H. Popkin, eds. Newton and Religion: Context, Nature, and Influence. (1999), pp. xvii, 325.; 13 papers by scholars using newly opened manuscripts
- Pfizenmaier, Thomas C. (1997). "Was Isaac Newton an Arian?". Journal of the History of Ideas. 58 (1): 57–80. S2CID 170545277.
- Ramati, Ayval (2001). "The Hidden Truth of Creation: Newton's Method of Fluxions". The British Journal for the History of Science. 34 (4): 417–38. S2CID 143045863.
- Snobelen, Stephen D. (2001). "'God of Gods, and Lord of Lords': The Theology of Isaac Newton's General Scholium to the Principia". Osiris. 16: 169–208. S2CID 170364912.
- Snobelen, Stephen D. (December 1999). "Isaac Newton, heretic: the strategies of a Nicodemite". The British Journal for the History of Science. 32 (4): 381–419. S2CID 145208136.
Science
- Bechler, Zev (2013). Contemporary Newtonian Research (Studies in the History of Modern Science)(Volume 9). Springer. ISBN 978-94-009-7717-4.
- Berlinski, David. Newton's Gift: How Sir Isaac Newton Unlocked the System of the World. (2000); ISBN 0-684-84392-7
- ISBN 978-0-19-851744-3.
- Cohen, I. Bernard and Smith, George E., ed. The Cambridge Companion to Newton. (2002). Focuses on philosophical issues only; excerpt and text search; complete edition online "The Cambridge Companion to Newton". Archived from the original on 8 October 2008. Retrieved 13 October 2008.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link) - Christianson, Gale (1984). In the Presence of the Creator: Isaac Newton & His Times. New York: Free Press. ISBN 978-0-02-905190-0. This well documented work provides, in particular, valuable information regarding Newton's knowledge of Patristics
- Cohen, I. B. (1980). The Newtonian Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-22964-7.
- Craig, John (1958). "Isaac Newton – Crime Investigator". Nature. 182 (4629): 149–52. S2CID 4200994.
- Craig, John (1963). "Isaac Newton and the Counterfeiters". Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London. 18 (2): 136–45. S2CID 143981415.
- Gleick, James (2003). Isaac Newton. Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 978-0-375-42233-1.
- Halley, E. (1687). "Review of Newton's Principia". Philosophical Transactions. 186: 291–97.
- ISBN 0-7624-1348-4Places selections from Newton's Principia in the context of selected writings by Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo and Einstein
- Herivel, J. W. (1965). The Background to Newton's Principia. A Study of Newton's Dynamical Researches in the Years 1664–84. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
- Newton, Isaac. Papers and Letters in Natural Philosophy, edited by ISBN 0-674-46853-8.
- Pemberton, H. (1728). "A View of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophy". The Physics Teacher. 4 (1): 8–9. .
- Shamos, Morris H. (1959). Great Experiments in Physics. New York: Henry Holt and Company, Inc. ISBN 978-0-486-25346-6.
External links
- Enlightening Science digital project: Texts of his papers, "Popularisations" and podcasts at the Newton Project
- "Archival material relating to Isaac Newton". UK National Archives.
- Portraits of Sir Isaac Newton at the National Portrait Gallery, London
Writings by Newton
- Newton's works – full texts, at the Newton Project
- Newton's papers in the Royal Society's archives
- The Newton Manuscripts at the National Library of Israel – the collection of all his religious writings
- Works by Isaac Newton at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about Isaac Newton at Internet Archive
- Works by Isaac Newton at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
- "Newton Papers" – Cambridge Digital Library