Essay Review: Newton at the Turn of the Century: The Correspondence of Isaac Newton

Johann Bernoulli's name is by an accident omitted from its place in the Index; in the notes to this document there is no mention of the story of Bernoulli's recognition of Newton's authorship of the solution to this problem published anonymously in Philosophical transactions , xix, no. 224, p. 384, which was sent to him. Actually Bernoulli had to choose (as he says himself) only between Wallis Newton , these two Englishmen only having received the challenge; he judged Newton “plus routiné dans la plus récente analyse des infinis” than Wallis , whose death was rumoured anyway. He also considered Newton “un des Mathematiciens de nôtre temps que j'estime le plus”. Pour le moment. ( Spiess O. (ed.), Der Briefwechel von Johann Bernoulli , i (Basel, 1955), 348, 430.) The well-known phrase ex ungue Leonem (from the tag, the hunter knows the lion by his footprint—or literally claw—see Brewster's Memoirs , (London, 1855), ii, 21) was employed by Bernoulli in a letter first published in the Histoire des ouvrages des Scavans for June 1697, ii, 454–55. I owe this reference to the kindness of Dr D. T. Whiteside.

It must be added that the arrangement of the notes could be improved. It is only on p. 45 that the reader is told of Flamsteed's essential rôle in the publication of Horrox's theory of the moon, which Newton was to adopt. Cf. Baily, p. 30 and Rigaud S. J. , Correspondence of scientific men in the seventeenth century (Oxford, 1841), ii, 131, 133.

Francis Baily , An account of the Revd. John Flamsteed (London, 1835; reprint, London, 1966).

MacPike E. F. Hevelius Flamsteed Halley : Three contemporary astronomers and their mutual relations (London, 1937). pp. 17–32. It might be added that all biographies of Flamsteed seem to be for the most part uncritical réchauffés of his own autobiographies, given in Baily. None uses his correspondence.

The useful Correspondence and papers of Edmond Halley by MacPike E. F. (London, 1932, 1937) has been succeeded by Armitage's A. recent brief study (London, 1966).

Beziat L. C. , “La vie et les travaux de Jean Hevelius”, Bullettino di biboligrafia e di storia delle scienze matematiche e fisice , x, (Rome, 1875), 497–558, 598–669. My wife and I are publishing Hevelius's correspondence with Oldenburg.

McKeon Robert M. presented a thèse at Paris in 1965 on L'etablissment de l'astronomie de précision et l'oeuvre d'Adrien Auzout . I gratefully acknowledge his kindness in presenting a copy to me.

I wish to single out here three papers by an author who has written too little, Olmsted J. W. : “The expedition of Jean Richer to Cayenne (1672–73)”, Isis , xxxiv (1942), 117–128; “The ‘Application’ of telescopes to astonomical instruments, 1667–1669”, Isis , xl (1949), 213–225; “The voyage of Jean Richer to Acadia in 1670”, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society , civ (1960), 612–634.

Flamsteed to Collins, 17 April 1672; Rigaud, op. cit. , ii, 134–36.

Pp. 54, 58; Baily, Account , 29; Rigaud, op. cit. , ii, 101, Hevelius had sent copies of his books to England to be sold by Oldenburg, so as to provide cash to pay Christopher Cock for the 50 foot lens he made for Hevelius. Flamsteed was not above borrowing a copy of Selenographia..

See the autobiography in Baily , Account , 28–29, and Baily's note p. 29. It has not proved possible yet to define the time limits of Flamsteed's excursion to the south of England in 1670. It marked the real beginning of his scientific life. If Flamsteed really went specially to Cambridge to visit Barrow and Newton it must have been at the instigation of Collins (especially) and Oldenburg. Flamsteed was entered in absentia at Jesus College on 21 December 1670 and took his degree by royal mandate in 1674 without, it seems, ever residing in the University.

Tables of the refraction at various altitudes were, until then, guesses based on a few empirical facts; Newton drew his from a basic hypothesis of the atmosphere's composition.

See in brief Dreyer J. L. E. , A history of astronomy from Thales to Kepler (Dover reprint, 1953), 193–96; the moon is treated in Books IV, V and VI of the Mathematical syntaxis. .

See Dreyer J. L. E. , Tycho Brahe (Dover reprint, 1963), 337–341, Thoren Victor E. , “Tycho Brahe's Lunar Theory”, Isis , lviii (1967), 19–36; and “Tycho Brahe's Discovery of the Variation”, Centaurus , xii (1967), 151–166.

Newton's best hopes of success in the lunar problem—an error of two or three minutes of arc in the predicted lunar position—would have amounted to an error of a degree (more or less) in longitude. Thus its practical usefulness was limited.

This he stated many times; see e.g. , pp. 103, 294, 302–303. Newton at first promised all due acknowledgement to Flamsteed.

P. 77; compare pp. 83, 170, etc. Of course (as Augustus de Morgan long ago remarked of Catherine Barton ) “conversation” does not signify “talk” alone; behaviour or conduct is nearer.

These were described by Marie Boas Hall A. Rupert “Newton's chemical experiments”, Archives internationales d'histoire des sciences , xi (1958), 113–152.

See Florian Cajori (ed.), Sir Isaac Newton's Mathamatical Principles … (Berkeley, 1946), 664, note 41. Cajori's note relates to 1723, Dr Scott's to 1695.

The cube of the parallax is proportional to the radius of the Earth.

See Hall A. Rupert Hall Marie Boas , The correspondence of Henry Oldenburg , iii (Madison, Wisc., 1966), 313, 348, 519. The indirect exchanges between Hooke and Hevelius continued over many years, the former doing nothing but demand that Hevelius take his own assertions upon trust.

Craig Sir John , Newton at the Mint (London, 1946), 6.

Hevelii J. prodromus astronomiae cum catalogo fixarum & firmamentum Sobiescianum (Danzig, 1690). They had been fully prepared for publication by the astronomer before his death.

Experimenta nova (Amsterdam, 1672), Bk. IV, c. 14.

Dreyer J. L. E. , Tycho Brahe , 370–375. A list of the MSS. themselves is on pp. 390–392.