Isaac NewtonMan, Myth, and MathematicsV. Frederick Rickey

fred-rickey@usma.edu

1702 portrait by Kneller

The original is in the National Portrait Gallery in London

Woolsthorpe Manor, Lincolnshire The South Front of the House with the apple tree to the right. It is a T-shaped early 17th. century limestone house, the birthplace of Sir Isaac Newton on Dec. 25th. 1642

Newtons Public Life1642Born, Woolsthorp1661To Trinity College Cambridge1665B.A.1668M.A.1669Lucasian Professor1672Fellow of the Royal Society1687Resists King James II1689Serves in Parliament1696Warden of the Mint1700Master of the Mint1700-1722Priority dispute over the calculus1703President of the Royal Society1705Knighted1727Died, London

Trinity College, Cantabrigia illustrata by David Loggan, 1690

I tooke a bodkine & put it betwixt my eye & the bone as near the backside of my eye as I could

Newtons alchemical shed.

Was Loggan the preincarnation of Escher?

Newtons Mathematical ReadingsBarrowEuclid (1655)OughtredClavis (1652)Descartes2nd Latin (1659-60)SchootenExercitationum (1657)VieteOpera (1646)WallisArithmetica infinitorum (1655)WallisTractatus duo (1659)

Took Descartess Geometry in hand, tho he had been told it would be very difficult, read some ten pages in it, then stopt, began again, went a little farther than the first time, stopt again, went back again to the beginning, read on til by degrees he made himself master of the whole, to that degree that he understood Descartess Geometry better than he had done Euclid.

Descartess Geometry, 1637, 1659

Descartes adopted Aristotles dictumThe proportion between straight lines and curves is not known and I even believe that it can never be known by man.

van Heurat on Arc Length, 1661

van Heuraets rectification, 1659

Rectification DestroyedAristotles dictum and Descartess program

But the story ends well.

The Fundamental Theorem of Calculus A Method whereby to square such crooked lines as may be squared.

For NewtonMathematical quantities are described by Continuous Motion.

E.g., Curves are generated by moving points

In Modern Terms: All variables are functions of time

Newton said that quantities flow, and so called them fluents.

How fast they flow or flex he called fluxions.

Par abuse de langu, d/dt ( fluent ) = fluxion

The Newtonian Telescope

Edmund Halley(1656-1742)

Centripital Force implies Kepler II

The Law of Universal Gravitation

Newton in 1689From a portrait by Kneller

The most important scientific book of all time

A Vulgar Mechanick can practice what he has been taught or seen done, but if he is in an error he knows not how to find it out and correct it, and if you put him out of his road, he is at a stand; Whereas he that is able to reason nimbly and judiciously about figure, force, and motion, is never at rest till he gets over every rub.

Newton to Nathaniel Hawes, 25 May 1694.

The Sir Isaac Newton Room

Newton'slived on St. Martin's Street, Leicester Square, London, from 1710 to 1725.The pine-paneled walls and carved mantel from the fore-parlour were purchased in 1937 for Babson College. The room is furnished with original artifacts and period reproductions.

The Newton AppleThere really was an apple tree at Woolsthorpe Manor. A fourth generation descendent at Babson College is known as the "Newton Apple". The apple is red and "mealy" with yellow and green stripes.

Newton at the mintThis was supposed to be a sinacure.

But Newton took is seriously.

To the sharpest mathematicians now flourishing throughout the worldTo determine the curved line joining two given points, situated at different distances from the horizontal and not in the same vertical line, along which a mobile body, running down by its own weight and starting to move from the upper point, will descend most quickly to the lowest point.

I do not know what I may seem to the world, but, as 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.

From a portrait by Sir James Thornhill in 1712 The original is in Woolsthorpe Manor

Isaac Newton wasA GENIUS who worked hardHe built On ye sholders of GiantsHe had brilliant insightsHe worked by thinking continuallyHe had stubborn perseverenceHe steadily expanded his inquiriesHe made mistake and learned from them

A statue in Trinity College, Cambridge

Newton MythsA student of Isaac BarrowDid his best work back on the farmInvented calculus to do physicsPrimarily a physicistPrincipia Invented by analysisUniversal gravitation a flash of insight in 1666Delayed 20 years publishing the PrincipiaAlchemy and Theology were diversionsProdigious computational facilityOld age mathematically barrenInvented edging on coins

Newtons death mask

Formerly owned by Thomas Jefferson

Credit:National Trust Photographic Library/Nick Meers Property:Woolsthorpe Manor (in Lincolnshire) Caption:This shows the South Front of the House (horiz. format),with the apple tree to the right. It is a T-shaped early C17th. limestone house, the birthplace of Sir Isaac Newton on Dec. 25th. 1642 Reference:070211The Newtonian Moment (NYPL), p. 6.In one of his early optical experiments, Newton inserted a bodkin between his eye and his skull bone. He described and illustrated the experiment in one of his notebooks (Cambridge, 1660s). Cambridge University Library, MS ADD 3975, p. 15 Ms. Add. 4000 f. 26v Shaping a wheel for the grinding of lenses Notebook of 164 leaves (originally 166) http://visualiseur.bnf.fr/Visualiseur?Destination=Gallica&O=NUMM-3363

Gallica.bnf.fr

e Sir Isaac Newton Room, purchased for Babson College by Roger Babson's wife Grace in 1937, was installed in the former Sir Isaac Newton Library (now called Tomasso Hall) on the Babson campus in 1939. It consists of the original pine-paneled walls and carved mantel from the fore-parlour of Isaac Newton'shouse on St. Martin's Street, Leicester Square,London, where he lived from 1710-1725. The room is furnished with original artifacts as well as period reproductions. The Isaac Newton Room is just one component of The Grace K. Babson Collection of Newtonia.Click on image for larger version.Written by R.C.(Rip) Rybnikar Updated August 12, 2004

http://www3.babson.edu/archives/museums_collections/sir_isaac_newton_room.cfmhttp://www3.babson.edu/Archives/museums_collections/Newton-Apple-Tree.cfmGallica.bnf.frJohn Michael Rysbrack (1694-1770) was probably the artist who prepared this plaster death mask of Newton. Rysbrack was also the sculptor of the monument to Newton in Westminster Abbey (see catalogue number 67). Several copies of Newton's death mask were circulating among artists in the eighteenth century and a number survive. This one was bought by John Maynard Keynes at the Sotheby sale of Newton's manuscripts in 1936. [Mandelbrote, p. 132]