The History of Sir Isaac Newton

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Slide 19

Image of a refracting telescope from the Cincinnati Observatory in 1848

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Slide 21

Woodcut illustration of a 45 m (150 ft) focal length Keplerian astronomical refracting telescope built by Johannes Hevelius. From his book Machina coelestis (first part), published in 1673.

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Robert Hooke FRS

(18 July 1635 – 3 March 1703) Hooke challenged Newton’s ideas. Newton had no stomach for controversy, so he stopped showing his ideas.

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Edmond Halley FRS

(8 November 1656 – 14 January 1742) was an English astronomer, geophysicist, mathematician, meteorologist, and physicist.

Slide 24

Plaque in South Cloister of Westminster Abbey

Slide 25

Halley told Newton that he and others were working on a problem:

Find the Force of Attraction by the sun that will cause the planetary orbits to be elliptical

Newton replied that he had solved this problem earlier. The solution is an inverse square law.

Halley then urged Newton to publish this and other results.

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Slide 27

Newton's own copy of his Principia, with hand-written corrections for the second edition

Slide 28

Although Newton had invented the calculus and used it to derive many of his results, he choose to write the Principia in geometric language.

This is because the modern algebraic form of analysis was not yet seen as a suitable form for writing mathematical ideas.

It would take another 50 years before analysis would finally end the tyranny that geometric thinking held over mathematics.

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Newton’s three Universal Laws of Motiopn were a giant first in the history of science.

Nothing like them had been seen before.

Before Newton, men observed nature and tried to describe nature in geometric (mathematical) terms.

After Newton, we seek the fundamental laws. Then a particular problem is solved by using mathematics with the fundamental laws.