Isaac Newton Man, Myth, and Mathematics

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Isaac NewtonMan, Myth, and Mathematics

• V. Frederick Rickey
• fred-rickey_at_usma.edu

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• 1702 portrait by Kneller
• The original is in the National Portrait Gallery
  in London

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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

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Newtons Public Life

• 1642 Born, Woolsthorp
• 1661 To Trinity College Cambridge
• 1665 B.A.
• 1668 M.A.
• 1669 Lucasian Professor
• 1672 Fellow of the Royal Society
• 1687 Resists King James II
• 1689 Serves in Parliament
• 1696 Warden of the Mint
• 1700 Master of the Mint
• 1700-1722 Priority dispute over the calculus
• 1703 President of the Royal Society
• 1705 Knighted
• 1727 Died, London

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Trinity College, Cantabrigia illustrata by David
Loggan, 1690
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• I tooke a bodkine put it betwixt my eye the
  bone as near the backside of my eye as I could

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• Newtons alchemical shed.
• Was Loggan the preincarnation of Escher?

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Newtons Mathematical Readings

• Barrow Euclid (1655)
• Oughtred Clavis (1652)
• Descartes 2nd Latin (1659-60)
• Schooten Exercitationum (1657)
• Viete Opera (1646)
• Wallis Arithmetica infinitorum (1655)
• Wallis Tractatus duo (1659)

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• 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.

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Descartess Geometry, 1637, 1659
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Descartes adopted Aristotles dictum

• The proportion between straight lines and curves
  is not known and I even believe that it can never
  be known by man.

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van Heurat on Arc Length, 1661
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van Heuraets rectification, 1659
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Rectification Destroyed

• Aristotles dictum
• and
• Descartess program
• But the story ends well.

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The Fundamental Theorem of Calculus

• A Method whereby to square such crooked lines as
  may be squared.

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For Newton

• Mathematical quantities are described by
  Continuous Motion.
• E.g., Curves are generated by moving points
• In Modern Terms All variables are functions of
  time

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• 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

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The Newtonian Telescope
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Edmund Halley  (1656-1742)
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Centripital Force implies Kepler II
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The Law of Universal Gravitation
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Newton in 1689

• From a portrait by Kneller

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The most important scientific book of all time
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• 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.

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The Sir Isaac Newton Room

• Newton's lived 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.

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The Newton Apple

• There 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.

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Newton at the mint

• This was supposed to be a sinacure.
• But Newton took is seriously.

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To the sharpest mathematicians now flourishing
throughout the world

• To 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.

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• 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.

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

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Isaac Newton wasA GENIUS who worked hard

• He built On ye sholders of Giants
• He had brilliant insights
• He worked by thinking continually
• He had stubborn perseverence
• He steadily expanded his inquiries
• He made mistake and learned from them

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• A statue in Trinity College, Cambridge

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Newton Myths

• A student of Isaac Barrow
• Did his best work back on the farm
• Invented calculus to do physics
• Primarily a physicist
• Principia Invented by analysis
• Universal gravitation a flash of insight in 1666
• Delayed 20 years publishing the Principia
• Alchemy and Theology were diversions
• Prodigious computational facility
• Old age mathematically barren
• Invented edging on coins

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• Newtons death mask
• Formerly owned by Thomas Jefferson