NEWTON, ISAAC (b. Woolsthorpe, England, 25 December 1642; d. London, England, 20 March 1727), mathematics, dynamics, celestial mechanics, astronomy, optics, natural philosophy.

Four vols. of the Royal Society's ed. of Newton's Correspondence (Cambridge, 1959- ) have (as of 1974) been published, vols. I-III edited by H. W. Turnbull, vol. IV by J. F. Scott; A. R. Hall has been appointed editor of the succeeding volumes. The Correspondence is not limited to letters but contains scientific documents of primary importance. A recent major collection is A. R. and M. B. Hall, eds., Unpublished Scientific Papers of Isaac Newton, a Selection From the Portsmouth Collection in the University Library, Cambridge (Cambridge, 1964). Other presentations of MSS are given in the ed. of the Principia with variant readings (1972, cited above), Herivel's Background (5), and in D. T. Whiteside's ed. of Newton's Mathematical Papers (3).

III. BIBLIOGRAPHIES. There are three bibliographies of Newton's writings, none complete or free of major error. One is George J. Gray, A Bibliography of the Works of Sir Isaac Newton, Together With a List of Books Illustrating His Works, 2nd ed., rev. and enl. (Cambridge, 1907; repr. London, 1966); H. Zeitlinger, “A Newton Bibliography,” pp. 148-170 of the volume ed. by W. J. Greenstreet (VI); and A Descriptive Catalogue of the Grace K. Babson Collection of the Works of Sir Isaac Newton . . . (New York, 1950), plus A Supplement . . . compiled by Henry P. Macomber (Babson Park, Mass., 1955), which lists some secondary materials from journals as well as books.

IV. MANUSCRIPT COLLECTIONS AND CATALOGUES. The Portsmouth Collection (University Library, Cambridge) was roughly catalogued by a syndicate consisting of H. R. Luard, G. G. Stokes, J. C. Adams, and G. D. Liveing, who produced A Catalogue of the Portsmouth Collection of Books and Papers Written by or Belonging to Sir Isaac Newton . . . (Cambridge, 1888); the bare descriptions do not always identify the major MSS or give the catalogue numbers (e.g., the Waste Book, U.L.C. MS Add. 4004, the major repository of Newton's early work in dynamics and in mathematics, appears as “A common-place book, written originally by B. Smith, D.D., with calculations by Newton written in the blank spaces. This contains Newton's first idea of Fluxions”). There is no adequate catalogue or printed guide to the Newton MSS in the libraries of Trinity College (Cambridge), the Royal Society of London, or the British Museum. The Keynes Collection (in the library of King's College, Cambridge) is almost entirely based on the Sotheby sale and is inventoried in the form of a marked copy of the sale catalogue, available in the library; see A. N. L. Munby, “The Keynes Collection of the Works of Sir Isaac Newton at King's College, Cambridge,” in Notes and Records. Royal Society of London, 10 (1952), 40-50. The “scientific portion” of the Portsmouth Collection was given to Cambridge University in the 1870's; the remainder was dispersed at public auction in 1936. See Sotheby's Catalogue of the Newton Papers, Sold by Order of the Viscount Lymington, to Whom They Have Descended From Catherine Conduitt, Viscountess Lymington, Great-niece of Sir Isaac Newton (London, 1936). No catalogue has ever been made available of the Macclesfield Collection (rich in Newton MSS), based originally on the papers of John Collins and William Jones, for which see S. P. Rigaud's 2-vol. Correspondence . . . (I). Further information concerning MS sources is given in Whiteside, Mathematical Papers, I, xxiv-xxxiii (3).

Many books from Newton's library are in the Trinity College Library (Cambridge); others are in public and private collections all over the world. R. de Villamil, Newton: The Man (London, 1931[?]; repr., with intro. by I. B. Cohen, New York, 1972), contains a catalogue (imperfect and incomplete) of books in Newton's library at the time of his death; an inventory with present locations of Newton's books is greatly to be desired. See P. E. Spargo, “Newton's Library,” in Endeavour, 31 (1972), 29-33, with short but valuable list of references. See also Library of Sir Isaac Newton. Presentation by the Pilgrim Trust to Trinity College Cambridge 30 October 1943 (Cambridge, 1944), described on pp. 5-7 of Thirteenth Annual Report of the Pilgrim Trust (Harlech, 1943).

SECONDARY LITERATURE

V. GUIDES TO THE SECONDARY LITERATURE. For guides to the literature concerning Newton, see . . . Catalogue . . . Babson Collection . . . (III); and scholarly eds., such as Mathematical Papers (3), Principia (I), and Correspondence (II). A most valuable year-by-year list of articles and books has been prepared and published by Clelia Pighetti: “Cinquant'anni di studi newtoniani (1908-1959),” in Rivista critica di storia della filosofia, 20 (1960), 181-203, 295-318. See also Magda Whitrow, ed., ISIS Cumulative Bibliography . . . 1913-65, II (London, 1971), 221-232. Two fairly recent surveys of the literature are I. B. Cohen, “Newton in the Light of Recent Scholarship,” in Isis, 51 (1960), 489-514; and D. T. Whiteside, “The Expanding World of Newtonian Research,” in History of Science, 1 (1962), 16-29.

VI. GENERAL WORKS. Biographies (e.g., by Stukeley, Brewster, More, Manuel) are listed below (1). Some major interpretative works and collections of studies on Newton are Ferd. Rosenberger, Isaac Newton und seine physikalischen Principien (Leipzig, 1895); Léon Bloch, La philosophie de Newton (Paris, 1908); S. I. Vavilov, Isaak Nyuton; nauchnaya biografia i stati, 3rd ed. (Moscow, 1961), German trans. by Josef Grün as Isaac Newton (Vienna, 1948), 2nd ed., rev., German trans. by Franz Boncourt (Berlin, 1951); Alexandre Koyré, Newtonian Studies (London-Cambridge, Mass., 1965) which, posthumously published, contains a number of errors—a more correct version is the French trans., Études newtoniennes (Paris, 1968), with an avertissement by Yvon Belaval; and Alberto Pala, Isaac Newton, scienza e filosofia (Turin, 1969).

Major collections of Newtonian studies include W. J. Greenstreet, ed., Isaac Newton 1642-1727 (London, 1927); F. E. Brasch, ed., Sir Isaac Newton 1727-1927 (Baltimore, 1928); S. I. Vavilov, ed., Isaak Nyuton 1643[n.s.]-1727, a symposium in Russian (Moscow-Leningrad, 1943); Royal Society, Newton Tercentenary Celebrations, 15-19 July 1946 (Cambridge, 1947); and Robert Palter, ed., The Annus Mirabilis of Sir Isaac Newton 1666-1966 (Cambridge, Mass., 1970), based on an earlier version in The Texas Quarterly, 10, no. 3 (autumn 1967).