But to no effect. Newton was so furious with Hooke that he threatened to suppress Book III of the Principia altogether, finally denouncing science as 'an impertinently litigious lady.
But instead of acknowledging Hooke's contribution Newton systematically deleted every possible mention of Hooke's name. Newton's hatred for Hooke was consumptive. Indeed, Newton later withheld publication of his Opticks and virtually withdrew from the Royal Society until Hooke's death in A fter publishing the Principia , Newton became more involved in public affairs.
In he was elected to represent Cambridge in Parliament, and during his stay in London he became acquainted with John Locke, the famous philosopher, and Nicolas Fatio de Duillier, a brilliant young mathematician who became an intimate friend.
In , however, Newton suffered a severe nervous disorder, not unlike his breakdown of The cause is open to interpretation: overwork; the stress of controversy; the unexplained loss of friendship with Fatio; or perhaps chronic mercury poisoning, the result of nearly three decades of alchemical research.
Each factor may have played a role. We only know Locke and Samuel Pepys received strange and seemingly deranged letters that prompted concern for Newton's 'discomposure in head, or mind, or both. His new position proved 'most proper,' and he left Cambridge for London without regret.
D uring his London years Newton enjoyed power and worldly success. His position at the Mint assured a comfortable social and economic status, and he was an active and able administrator. After the death of Hooke in , Newton was elected president of the Royal Society and was annually reelected until his death.
In he published his second major work, the Opticks , based largely on work completed decades before. He was knighted in A lthough his creative years had passed, Newton continued to exercise a profound influence on the development of science. In effect, the Royal Society was Newton's instrument, and he played it to his personal advantage. His tenure as president has been described as tyrannical and autocratic, and his control over the lives and careers of younger disciples was all but absolute.
Newton could not abide contradiction or controversy - his quarrels with Hooke provide singular examples. But in later disputes, as president of the Royal Society, Newton marshaled all the forces at his command. For example, he published Flamsteed's astronomical observations - the labor of a lifetime - without the author's permission; and in his priority dispute with Leibniz concerning the calculus, Newton enlisted younger men to fight his war of words, while behind the lines he secretly directed charge and countercharge.
In the end, the actions of the Society were little more than extensions of Newton's will, and until his death he dominated the landscape of science without rival. Scientific Achievements Mathematics - The origin of Newton's interest in mathematics can be traced to his undergraduate days at Cambridge.
But between and his return to Cambridge after the plague, Newton made fundamental contributions to analytic geometry, algebra, and calculus. Specifically, he discovered the binomial theorem, new methods for expansion of infinite series, and his 'direct and inverse method of fluxions.
Hence, a 'fluxion' represents the rate of change of a 'fluent'--a continuously changing or flowing quantity, such as distance, area, or length. In essence, fluxions were the first words in a new language of physics. N ewton's creative years in mathematics extended from to roughly the spring of Although his predecessors had anticipated various elements of the calculus, Newton generalized and integrated these insights while developing new and more rigorous methods.
The essential elements of his thought were presented in three tracts, the first appearing in a privately circulated treatise, De analysi On Analysis ,which went unpublished until In , Newton developed a more complete account of his method of infinitesimals, which appeared nine years after his death as Methodus fluxionum et serierum infinitarum The Method of Fluxions and Infinite Series , In addition to these works, Newton wrote four smaller tracts, two of which were appended to his Opticks of Newton and Leibniz.
N ext to its brilliance, the most characteristic feature of Newton's mathematical career was delayed publication. Newton's priority dispute with Leibniz is a celebrated but unhappy example. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Newton's most capable adversary, began publishing papers on calculus in , almost 20 years after Newton's discoveries commenced.
The result of this temporal discrepancy was a bitter dispute that raged for nearly two decades. The ordeal began with rumors that Leibniz had borrowed ideas from Newton and rushed them into print. It ended with charges of dishonesty and outright plagiarism.
The Newton-Leibniz priority dispute--which eventually extended into philosophical areas concerning the nature of God and the universe--ultimately turned on the ambiguity of priority. It is now generally agreed that Newton and Leibniz each developed the calculus independently, and hence they are considered co-discoverers. But while Newton was the first to conceive and develop his method of fluxions, Leibniz was the first to publish his independent results.
N ewton's optical research, like his mathematical investigations, began during his undergraduate years at Cambridge. But unlike his mathematical work, Newton's studies in optics quickly became public. Shortly after his election to the Royal Society in , Newton published his first paper in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. This paper, and others that followed, drew on his undergraduate researches as well as his Lucasian lectures at Cambridge.
I n , Newton performed a number of experiments on the composition of light. Guided initially by the writings of Kepler and Descartes, Newton's main discovery was that visible white light is heterogeneous--that is, white light is composed of colors that can be considered primary.
Through a brilliant series of experiments, Newton demonstrated that prisms separate rather than modify white light. Contrary to the theories of Aristotle and other ancients, Newton held that white light is secondary and heterogeneous, while the separate colors are primary and homogeneous.
Of perhaps equal importance, Newton also demonstrated that the colors of the spectrum, once thought to be qualities, correspond to an observed and quantifiable 'degree of Refrangibility. N ewton's most famous experiment, the experimentum crucis , demonstrated his theory of the composition of light.
Briefly, in a dark room Newton allowed a narrow beam of sunlight to pass from a small hole in a window shutter through a prism, thus breaking the white light into an oblong spectrum on a board.
Then, through a small aperture in the board, Newton selected a given color for example, red to pass through yet another aperture to a second prism, through which it was refracted onto a second board. What began as ordinary white light was thus dispersed through two prisms.
N ewton's 'crucial experiment' demonstrated that a selected color leaving the first prism could not be separated further by the second prism. The selected beam remained the same color, and its angle of refraction was constant throughout. Newton concluded that white light is a 'Heterogeneous mixture of differently refrangible Rays' and that colors of the spectrum cannot themselves be individually modified, but are 'Original and connate properties.
His Lucasian lectures, later published in part as Optical Lectures , supplement other researches published in the Society's Transactions dating from February The Opticks. T he Opticks of , which first appeared in English, is Newton's most comprehensive and readily accessible work on light and color. In Newton's words, the purpose of the Opticks was 'not to explain the Properties of Light by Hypotheses, but to propose and prove them by Reason and Experiments.
A subtle blend of mathematical reasoning and careful observation, the Opticks became the model for experimental physics in the 18th century. The Corpuscular Theory. B ut the Opticks contained more than experimental results. As the years progressed, Newton completed his work on universal gravitation , diffraction of light, centrifugal force, centripetal force, inverse-square law, bodies in motion and the variations in tides due to gravity. His impressive body of work made him a leader in scientific research.
However, in his work came to standstill after he suffered a nervous breakdown. Upon regaining his health Newton returned to the university. He became a leader against what he saw as an attack on the university by King James II. The king wanted only Roman Catholics to be in positions of power in government and academia.
Newton spoke out against the king. While in London he became more enchanted with the life of politics than the life of research. After suffering a second breakdown in Newton retired from research. He became Warden of the Royal Mint in He became Master of the Royal Mint in Newton was very instrumental in developing techniques to prevent counterfeiting of the English money. Throughout Newton's career he was torn between his desire for fame and his fear of criticism.
His overwhelming fear of criticism caused him to resist immediate publication of his work. The result was a less-than-stellar performance, but one that is understandable, given his dual course of study.
It was during this time that Newton kept a second set of notes, entitled "Quaestiones Quaedam Philosophicae" "Certain Philosophical Questions". The "Quaestiones" reveal that Newton had discovered the new concept of nature that provided the framework for the Scientific Revolution. Though Newton graduated without honors or distinctions, his efforts won him the title of scholar and four years of financial support for future education.
In , the bubonic plague that was ravaging Europe had come to Cambridge, forcing the university to close. After a two-year hiatus, Newton returned to Cambridge in and was elected a minor fellow at Trinity College, as he was still not considered a standout scholar. In the ensuing years, his fortune improved.
Newton received his Master of Arts degree in , before he was During this time, he came across Nicholas Mercator's published book on methods for dealing with infinite series. Newton quickly wrote a treatise, De Analysi , expounding his own wider-ranging results. He shared this with friend and mentor Isaac Barrow, but didn't include his name as author.
In August , Barrow identified its author to Collins as "Mr. Newton's work was brought to the attention of the mathematics community for the first time. Shortly afterward, Barrow resigned his Lucasian professorship at Cambridge, and Newton assumed the chair. Newton made discoveries in optics, motion and mathematics. Newton theorized that white light was a composite of all colors of the spectrum, and that light was composed of particles. His momentous book on physics, Principia , contains information on nearly all of the essential concepts of physics except energy, ultimately helping him to explain the laws of motion and the theory of gravity.
Along with mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, Newton is credited for developing essential theories of calculus. Newton's first major public scientific achievement was designing and constructing a reflecting telescope in As a professor at Cambridge, Newton was required to deliver an annual course of lectures and chose optics as his initial topic.
He used his telescope to study optics and help prove his theory of light and color. The Royal Society asked for a demonstration of his reflecting telescope in , and the organization's interest encouraged Newton to publish his notes on light, optics and color in Sir Isaac Newton contemplates the force of gravity, as the famous story goes, on seeing an apple fall in his orchard, circa Between and , Newton returned home from Trinity College to pursue his private study, as school was closed due to the Great Plague.
Legend has it that, at this time, Newton experienced his famous inspiration of gravity with the falling apple. According to this common myth, Newton was sitting under an apple tree when a fruit fell and hit him on the head, inspiring him to suddenly come up with the theory of gravity.
While there is no evidence that the apple actually hit Newton on the head, he did see an apple fall from a tree, leading him to wonder why it fell straight down and not at an angle.
Consequently, he began exploring the theories of motion and gravity. It was during this month hiatus as a student that Newton conceived many of his most important insights—including the method of infinitesimal calculus, the foundations for his theory of light and color, and the laws of planetary motion—that eventually led to the publication of his physics book Principia and his theory of gravity.
In , following 18 months of intense and effectively nonstop work, Newton published Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy , most often known as Principia. Principia is said to be the single most influential book on physics and possibly all of science. Its publication immediately raised Newton to international prominence. Principia offers an exact quantitative description of bodies in motion, with three basic but important laws of motion:.
Force is equal to mass times acceleration, and a change in motion i. In Newton's account, gravity kept the universe balanced, made it work, and brought heaven and Earth together in one great equation. Among the dissenters was Robert Hooke , one of the original members of the Royal Academy and a scientist who was accomplished in a number of areas, including mechanics and optics.
While Newton theorized that light was composed of particles, Hooke believed it was composed of waves. Hooke quickly condemned Newton's paper in condescending terms, and attacked Newton's methodology and conclusions. Hooke was not the only one to question Newton's work in optics. But because of Hooke's association with the Royal Society and his own work in optics, his criticism stung Newton the worst.
Unable to handle the critique, he went into a rage—a reaction to criticism that was to continue throughout his life. Newton denied Hooke's charge that his theories had any shortcomings and argued the importance of his discoveries to all of science. In the ensuing months, the exchange between the two men grew more acrimonious, and soon Newton threatened to quit the Royal Society altogether. He remained only when several other members assured him that the Fellows held him in high esteem.
The rivalry between Newton and Hooke would continue for several years thereafter. Then, in , Newton suffered a complete nervous breakdown and the correspondence abruptly ended.
The death of his mother the following year caused him to become even more isolated, and for six years he withdrew from intellectual exchange except when others initiated correspondence, which he always kept short. During his hiatus from public life, Newton returned to his study of gravitation and its effects on the orbits of planets. Ironically, the impetus that put Newton on the right direction in this study came from Robert Hooke.
In a letter of general correspondence to Royal Society members for contributions, Hooke wrote to Newton and brought up the question of planetary motion, suggesting that a formula involving the inverse squares might explain the attraction between planets and the shape of their orbits. Subsequent exchanges transpired before Newton quickly broke off the correspondence once again.
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