Personal Life of Isaac Newton

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Personal Life ofIsaac Newton

• Nice Web site at http//wwwgap.dcs.stand.ac.uk/hi
  story/Mathematicians/Newton.html

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Isaac Newton (1642-1727)
Robert Hooke (1635-1703) No portrait survives.
His name is somewhat obscure today, due in part
to the enmity of his famous, influential, and
extremely vindictive colleague, Sir Isaac
Newton. Yet Hooke was perhaps the single greatest
experimental scientist of the seventeenth
century.
Edmond Halley (1656-1742) Discovered
the comet in 1680.

• Source Adam Hart-Davis. Program for BBC
  television reviewed in London Telegraph,
  September 11, 2002

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Newton, Hooke, and Halley

• Wrote the Principia after a challenge by Hooke
  and Halley

• How did the comet play a role? Apparently Newton
  believed the planets all circles the sun in the
  same direction due to a cosmic vortex.
• Halleys comet went the other direction! A clue
  that Newton was wrong. A start toward the
  Universal theory!