Electronic edition published by Cultural Heritage Langauge Technologies (with permission from Charles Scribners and Sons) and funded by the National Science Foundation International Digital Libraries Program. This text has been proofread to a low degree of accuracy. It was converted to electronic form using data entry.
NEWTON, ISAAC (b. Woolsthorpe, England,
25 December 1642; d. London, England, 20 March
1727), mathematics, dynamics, celestial mechanics,
astronomy, optics, natural philosophy.
discoveries were made while Newton remained in
seclusion at Woolsthorpe, with only an occasional
excursion into nearby Boothby. During these “two
plague years of 1665 & 1666,” Newton later said,
“I was in the prime of my age for invention & minded
Mathematicks & Philosophy more then at any time
since.” In fact, however, Newton was back in
Cambridge on at least one visit between March and
June 1666.8 He appears to have written out his
mathematical discoveries at Trinity, where he had
access to the college and University libraries, and then
to have returned to Lincolnshire to revise and polish
these results. It is possible that even the prism
experiments on refraction and dispersion were made
in his rooms at Trinity, rather than in the country,
although while at Woolsthorpe he may have made
pendulum experiments to determine the gravitational
pull of the earth. The episode of the falling of the
apple, which Newton himself said “occasioned” the
“notion of gravitation,” must have occurred at
either Boothby or Woolsthorpe.9
Lucasian Professor. On 1 October 1667, some two
years after his graduation, Newton was elected minor
fellow of Trinity, and on 16 March 1668 he was
admitted major fellow. He was created M.A. on
7 July 1668 and on 29 October 1669, at the age of
twenty-six, he was appointed Lucasian professor. He
succeeded Isaac Barrow, first incumbent of the chair,
and it is generally believed that Barrow resigned his
professorship so that Newton might have it.10
University statutes required that the Lucasian
professor give at least one lecture a week in every term.
He was then ordered to put in finished form his ten
(or more) annual lectures for deposit in the University
Library. During Newton's tenure of the professorship,
he accordingly deposited manuscripts of his lectures
on optics (1670-1672), arithmetic and algebra
(1673-1683), most of book I of the Principia
(1684-1685), and “The System of the World” (1687).
There is, however, no record of what lectures, if any,
he gave in 1686, or from 1688 until he removed to
London early in 1696. In the 1670's Newton
attempted unsuccessfully to publish his annotations
on Kinckhuysen's algebra and his own treatise on
fluxions. In 1672 he did succeed in publishing an
improved or corrected edition of Varenius' Geographia
generalis, apparently intended for the use of his
students.
During the years in which Newton was writing the
Principia, according to Humphrey Newton's recollection,11
“he seldom left his chamber except at term
time, when he read in the schools as being Lucasianus
Professor, where so few went to hear him, and fewer
that understood him, that ofttimes he did in a manner,
for want of hearers, read to the walls.” When he
lectured he “usually staid about half an hour; when
he had no auditors, he commonly returned in a 4th
part of that time or less.” He occasionally received
foreigners “with a great deal of freedom, candour, and
respect.” He “ate sparingly,” and often “forgot to
eat
at all,” rarely dining “in the hall, except on some
public days,” when he was apt to appear “with shoes
down at heels, stockings untied, surplice on, and his
head scarcely combed.” He “seldom went to the
chapel,” but very often “went to St Mary's church,
especially in the forenoon.”12
From time to time Newton went to London, where
he attended meetings of the Royal Society (of which
he had been a fellow since 1672). He contributed
£40 toward the building of the new college library
(1676), as well as giving it various books. He corresponded,
both directly and indirectly (often through
Henry Oldenburg as intermediary), with scientists in
England and on the Continent, including Boyle,
Collins, Flamsteed, David Gregory, Halley, Hooke,
Huygens, Leibniz, and Wallis. He was often busy
with chemical experiments, both before and after
writing the Principia, and in the mid-1670's he
contemplated a publication on optics.13 During the
1690's, Newton was further engaged in revising the
Principia for a second edition; he then contemplated
introducing into book III some selections from
Lucretius and references to an ancient tradition of
wisdom. A major research at this time was the effect
of solar perturbations on the motions of the moon.
He also worked on mathematical problems more or
less continually throughout these years.
Among the students with whom Newton had
friendly relations, the most significant for his life and
career was Charles Montague, a fellow-commoner of
Trinity and grandson of the Earl of Manchester; he
“was one of the small band of students who assisted
Newton in forming the Philosophical Society of
Cambridge”14 (the attempt to create this society was
unsuccessful). Newton was also on familiar terms with
Henry More, Edward Paget (whom he recommended
for a post in mathematics at Christ's Hospital),
Francis Aston, John Ellis (later master of Caius), and
J. F. Vigani, first professor of chemistry at Cambridge,
who is said to have eventually been banished from
Newton's presence for having told him “a loose story
about a nun.” Newton was active in defending the
rights of the university when the Catholic monarch
James II tried to mandate the admission of the
Benedictine monk Alban Francis. In 1689, he was
elected by the university constituency to serve as
Member of the Convention Parliament.