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Newton,Isaac(16421727)

English physicist and mathematician who was born into a poor farming family. Luckily for humanity, Newton was not a good farmer, and was sent to Cambridge to study to become a preacher. At Cambridge, Newton studied mathematics, being especially strongly influenced by Euclid, although he was also influenced by Baconian and Cartesian philosophies. Newton was forced to leave Cambridge when it was closed because of the plague, and it was during this period that he made some of his most significant discoveries. ith the reticence he was to show later in life, Newton did not, however, publish his results. Newton suffered a mental breakdown in !"#$ and was still recovering through !"#%. &n response to a letter from 'ooke, he suggested that a particle, if released, would spiral in to the center of the Earth. 'ooke wrote back, claiming that the path would not be a spiral, but an ellipse. Newton, who hated being bested, then proceeded to work out the mathematics of orbits. Again, he did not publish his calculations. Newton then began devoting his efforts to theological speculation and put the calculations on elliptical motion aside, telling 'alley he had lost them ( estfall !%%), p. *+),. 'alley, who had become interested in orbits, finally convinced Newton to e-pand and publish his calculations. Newton devoted the period from August !".* to spring !"." to this task, and the result became one of the most important and influential works on physics of all times, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy) (!".#,, often shortened to Principia Mathematica or simply /the Principia./ &n Book & of Principia, Newton opened with definitions and the three laws of motion now known as Newton0s laws (laws of inertia, action and reaction, and acceleration proportional to force,. Book && presented Newton0s new scientific philosophy which came to replace Cartesianism. 1inally, Book &&& consisted of applications of his dynamics, including an e-planation for tides and a theory of lunar motion. 2o test his hypothesis of universal gravitation, Newton wrote 1lamsteed to ask if 3aturn had been observed to slow down upon passing 4upiter. 2he surprised 1lamsteed replied that an effect had indeed been observed, and it was closely predicted by the calculations Newton had provided. Newton0s e5uations were further confirmed by observing the shape of the Earth to be oblate spheroidal, as Newton claimed it should be, rather than prolate spheroidal, as claimed by the Cartesians. Newton0s

e5uations also described the motion of 6oon by successive appro-imations, and correctly predicted the return of 'alley0s Comet. Newton also correctly formulated and solved the first ever problem in the calculus of variations which involved finding the surface of revolution which would give minimum resistance to flow (assuming a specific drag law,. Newton invented a scientific method which was truly universal in its scope. Newton presented his methodology as a set of four rules for scientific reasoning. 2hese rules were stated in the Principia and proposed that (!, we are to admit no more causes of natural things such as are both true and sufficient to e-plain their appearances, (7, the same natural effects must be assigned to the same causes, (), 5ualities of bodies are to be esteemed as universal, and (*, propositions deduced from observation of phenomena should be viewed as accurate until other phenomena contradict them. 2hese four concise and universal rules for investigation were truly revolutionary. By their application, Newton formulated the universal laws of nature with which he was able to unravel virtually all the unsolved problems of his day. Newton went much further than outlining his rules for reasoning, however, actually describing how they might be applied to the solution of a given problem. 2he analytic method he invented far e-ceeded the more philosophical and less scientifically rigorous approaches of Aristotle and A5uinas. Newton refined 8alileo0s e-perimental method, creating the compositional method of e-perimentation still practiced today. &n fact, the following description of the e-perimental method from Newton0s Optics could easily be mistaken for a modern statement of current methods of investigation, if not for Newton0s use of the words /natural philosophy/ in place of the modern term /the physical sciences./ Newton wrote, /As in mathematics, so in natural philosophy the investigation of difficult things by the method of analysis ought ever to precede the method of composition. 2his analysis consists of making e-periments and observations, and in drawing general conclusions from them by induction...by this way of analysis we may proceed from compounds to ingredients, and from motions to the forces producing them9 and in general from effects to their causes, and from particular causes to more general ones till the argument end in the most general. 2his is the method of analysis: and the synthesis consists in assuming the causes discovered and established as principles, and by them e-plaining the phenomena preceding from them, and proving the e-planations./ Newton formulated the classical theories of mechanics and optics and invented calculus years before Leibni;. 'owever, he did not publish his work on calculus until afterward Leibni; had published his. 2his led to a bitter priority dispute between English and continental mathematicians which persisted for decades, to the detriment of all concerned. Newton discovered that the binomial theorem was valid for fractional powers, but left it for allis to publish (which he did, with appropriate credit to Newton,. Newton formulated a theory of sound, but derived a speed which did not agree with his e-periments. 2he reason for the discrepancy was that the concept of adiabatic propagation did not yet e-ist, so Newton0s answer was too low by

a factor of , where is the ratio of heat capacities of air. Newton therefore fudged his theory until agreement was achieved (Engineering and 3cience, pp. !$<!",. &n Optics (!#+*,, whose publication Newton delayed until 'ooke0s death, Newton observed that white light could be separated by a prism into a spectrum of different colors, each characteri;ed by a uni5ue refractivity, and proposed the corpuscular theory of light. Newton0s views on optics were born out of the original prism e-periments he performed at Cambridge. &n his /e-perimentum crucis/ (crucial e-periment,, he found that the image produced by a prism was oval<shaped and not circular, as current theories of light would re5uire. 'e observed a half<red, half<blue string through a prism, and found the ends to be dis=ointed. 'e also observed Newton0s rings, which are actually a manifestation of the wave nature of light which Newton did not believe in. Newton believed that light must move faster in a medium when it is refracted towards the normal, in opposition to the result predicted by 'uygens0s wave theory. Newton also formulated a system of chemistry in >uery )! at the end of Optics. &n this corpuscular theory, /elements/ consisted of different arrangements of atoms, and atoms consisted of small, hard, billiard ball<like particles. 'e e-plained chemical reactions in terms of the chemical affinities of the participating substances. Newton devoted a ma=ority of his free time later in life (after !"#., to fruitless alchemical e-periments. Newton was e-tremely sensitive to criticism, and even ceased publishing until the death of his arch<rival 'ooke. &t was only through the prodding of 'alley that Newton was persuaded at all to publish the Principia Mathematica. &n the latter portion of his life, he devoted much of his time to alchemical researches and trying to date events in the Bible. After Newton0s death, his burial place was moved. ?uring the e-humation, it was discovered that Newton had massive amounts of mercury in his body, probably resulting from his alchemical pursuits. 2his would certainly e-plain Newton0s eccentricity in late life. Newton was appointed arden of the British 6int in !"%$. Newton was knighted by >ueen Anne. 'owever, the act was /an honor bestowed not for his contributions to science, nor for his service at the 6int, but for the greater glory of party politics in the election of !#+$/ ( estfall !%%), p. "7$,. Newton singlehandedly contributed more to the development of science than any other individual in history. 'e surpassed all the gains brought about by the great scientific minds of anti5uity, producing a scheme of the universe which was more consistent, elegant, and intuitive than any proposed before. Newton stated e-plicit principles of scientific methods which applied universally to all branches of science. 2his was in sharp contradistinction to the earlier methodologies of Aristotle and A5uinas, which had outlined separate methods for different disciplines. Although his methodology was strictly logical, Newton still believed deeply in the

necessity of a 8od. 'is theological views are characteri;ed by his belief that the beauty and regularity of the natural world could only /proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being./ 'e felt that /the 3upreme 8od e-ists necessarily, and by the same necessity he e-ists always and everywhere./ Newton believed that 8od periodically intervened to keep the universe going on track. 'e therefore denied the importance of Leibni;0s vis viva as nothing more than an interesting 5uantity which remained constant in elastic collisions and therefore had no physical importance or meaning. Although earlier philosophers such as 8alileo and 4ohn @hiloponus had used e-perimental procedures, Newton was the first to e-plicitly define and systemati;e their use. 'is methodology produced a neat balance between theoretical and e-perimental in5uiry and between the mathematical and mechanical approaches. Newton mathemati;ed all of the physical sciences, reducing their study to a rigorous, universal, and rational procedure which marked the ushering in of the Age of Aeason. 2hus, the basic principles of investigation set down by Newton have persisted virtually without alteration until modern times. &n the years since Newton0s death, they have borne fruit far e-ceeding anything even Newton could have imagined. 2hey form the foundation on which the technological civili;ation of today rests. 2he principles e-pounded by Newton were even applied to the social sciences, influencing the economic theories of Adam 3mith and the decision to make the Bnited 3tates legislature bicameral. 2hese latter applications, however, pale in contrast to Newton0s scientific contributions. &t is therefore no e-aggeration to identify Newton as the single most important contributor to the development of modern science. 2he Latin inscription on Newton0s tomb, despite its bombastic language, is thus fully =ustified in proclaiming, /6ortalsC re=oice at so great an ornament to the human raceC/ Ale-ander @ope0s couplet is also apropos: /Nature and Nature0s laws lay hid in night9 8od said, Let Newton beC and all was light./ 3everal interesting Newton 5uotes are given by 6isner et al. (!%#), pp. *+<*!,.

Sir Isaac Newton

Born: 4 Jan 1643 in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England Died: 31 arch 1!"! in London, England

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3how birthplace location @reviou s @reviou s (Chronologically, (Alphabetically, Ne-t Ne-t Biographies &nde6ain inde-

Isaac Newton0s life can be divided into three 5uite distinct periods. 2he first is his boyhood days from !"*) up to his appointment to a chair in !""%. 2he second period from !""% to !".# was the highly productive period in which he was Lucasian professor at Cambridge. 2he third period (nearly as long as the other two combined, saw Newton as a highly paid government official in London with little further interest in mathematical research. &saac Newton was born in the manor house of oolsthorpe, near 8rantham in Lincolnshire. Although by the calendar in use at the time of his birth he was born on Christmas ?ay !"*7, we give the date of * 4anuary !"*) in this biography which is the /corrected/ 8regorian calendar date bringing it into line with our present calendar. (2he 8regorian calendar was not adopted in England until !#$7., &saac Newton came from a family of farmers but never knew his father, also named &saac Newton, who died in Dctober !"*7, three months before his son was born. Although &saac0s father owned property and animals which made him 5uite a wealthy man, he was completely uneducated and could not sign his own name. Eou can see a picture of oolsthorpe 6anor as it is now.

&saac0s mother 'annah Ayscough remarried Barnabas 3mith the minister of the church at North itham, a nearby village, when &saac was two years old. 2he young child was then

left in the care of his grandmother 6argery Ayscough at oolsthorpe. Basically treated as an orphan, &saac did not have a happy childhood. 'is grandfather 4ames Ayscough was never mentioned by &saac in later life and the fact that 4ames left nothing to &saac in his will, made when the boy was ten years old, suggests that there was no love lost between the two. 2here is no doubt that &saac felt very bitter towards his mother and his step< father Barnabas 3mith. hen e-amining his sins at age nineteen, &saac listed:< Threatening my father and mother Smith to burn them and the house o er them. Bpon the death of his stepfather in !"$), Newton lived in an e-tended family consisting of his mother, his grandmother, one half<brother, and two half<sisters. 1rom shortly after this time &saac began attending the 1ree 8rammar 3chool in 8rantham. Although this was only five miles from his home, &saac lodged with the Clark family at 8rantham. 'owever he seems to have shown little promise in academic work. 'is school reports described him as 0idle0 and 0inattentive0. 'is mother, by now a lady of reasonable wealth and property, thought that her eldest son was the right person to manage her affairs and her estate. &saac was taken away from school but soon showed that he had no talent, or interest, in managing an estate. An uncle, illiam Ayscough, decided that &saac should prepare for entering university and, having persuaded his mother that this was the right thing to do, &saac was allowed to return to the 1ree 8rammar 3chool in 8rantham in !""+ to complete his school education. 2his time he lodged with 3tokes, who was the headmaster of the school, and it would appear that, despite suggestions that he had previously shown no academic promise, &saac must have convinced some of those around him that he had academic promise. 3ome evidence points to 3tokes also persuading &saac0s mother to let him enter university, so it is likely that &saac had shown more promise in his first spell at the school than the school reports suggest. Another piece of evidence comes from &saac0s list of sins referred to above. 'e lists one of his sins as:< ... setting my heart on money, learning, and pleasure more than Thee ... which tells us that &saac must have had a passion for learning. e know nothing about what &saac learnt in preparation for university, but 3tokes was an able man and almost certainly gave &saac private coaching and a good grounding. 2here is no evidence that he learnt any mathematics, but we cannot rule out 3tokes introducing him to Euclid0s !lements which he was well capable of teaching (although there is evidence mentioned below that Newton did not read Euclid before !""),. Anecdotes abound about a mechanical ability which &saac displayed at the school and stories are told of his skill in making models of machines, in particular of clocks and windmills. 'owever, when biographers seek information about famous people there is always a tendency for people to report what they think is e-pected of them, and these anecdotes may simply be made up later by those who felt that the most famous scientist in the world ought to have had these skills at school.

Newton entered his uncle0s old College, 2rinity College Cambridge, on $ 4une !""!. 'e was older than most of his fellow students but, despite the fact that his mother was financially well off, he entered as a si;ar. A si;ar at Cambridge was a student who received an allowance toward college e-penses in e-change for acting as a servant to other students. 2here is certainly some ambiguity in his position as a si;ar, for he seems to have associated with /better class/ students rather than other si;ars. estfall (see F7)G or F7*G, has suggested that Newton may have had 'umphrey Babington, a distant relative who was a 1ellow of 2rinity, as his patron. 2his reasonable e-planation would fit well with what is known and mean that his mother did not sub=ect him unnecessarily to hardship as some of his biographers claim. Newton0s aim at Cambridge was a law degree. &nstruction at Cambridge was dominated by the philosophy of Aristotle but some freedom of study was allowed in the third year of the course. Newton studied the philosophy of ?escartes, 8assendi, 'obbes, and in particular Boyle. 2he mechanics of the Copernican astronomy of 8alileo attracted him and he also studied Hepler0s Optics. 'e recorded his thoughts in a book which he entitled "uaestiones "uaedam Philosophicae (Certain @hilosophical >uestions,. &t is a fascinating account of how Newton0s ideas were already forming around !""*. 'e headed the te-t with a Latin statement meaning /@lato is my friend, Aristotle is my friend, but my best friend is truth/ showing himself a free thinker from an early stage. 'ow Newton was introduced to the most advanced mathematical te-ts of his day is slightly less clear. According to de 6oivre, Newton0s interest in mathematics began in the autumn of !"") when he bought an astrology book at a fair in Cambridge and found that he could not understand the mathematics in it. Attempting to read a trigonometry book, he found that he lacked knowledge of geometry and so decided to read Barrow0s edition of Euclid0s !lements. 2he first few results were so easy that he almost gave up but he:< ... changed his mind #hen he read that parallelograms upon the same base and bet#een the same parallels are e$ual. Aeturning to the beginning, Newton read the whole book with a new respect. 'e then turned to Dughtred0s %la is Mathematica and ?escartes0 &a '(om(trie. 2he new algebra and analytical geometry of IiJte was read by Newton from 1rans van 3chooten0s edition of IiJte0s collected works published in !"*". Dther ma=or works of mathematics which he studied around this time was the newly published ma=or work by van 3chooten 'eometria a )enato *es %artes which appeared in two volumes in !"$%<!""!. 2he book contained important appendices by three of van 3chooten disciples, 4an de itt, 4ohan 'udde, and 'endrick van 'euraet. Newton also studied allis0s +lgebra and it appears that his first original mathematical work came from his study of this te-t. 'e read allis0s method for finding a s5uare of e5ual area to a parabola and a hyperbola which used indivisibles. Newton made notes on allis0s treatment of series but also devised his own proofs of the theorems writing:< Thus allis doth it, but it may be done thus ...

&t would be easy to think that Newton0s talent began to emerge on the arrival of Barrow to the Lucasian chair at Cambridge in !"") when he became a 1ellow at 2rinity College. Certainly the date matches the beginnings of Newton0s deep mathematical studies. 'owever, it would appear that the !"") date is merely a coincidence and that it was only some years later that Barrow recognised the mathematical genius among his students. ?espite some evidence that his progress had not been particularly good, Newton was elected a scholar on 7. April !""* and received his bachelor0s degree in April !""$. &t would appear that his scientific genius had still not emerged, but it did so suddenly when the plague closed the Bniversity in the summer of !""$ and he had to return to Lincolnshire. 2here, in a period of less than two years, while Newton was still under 7$ years old, he began revolutionary advances in mathematics, optics, physics, and astronomy. hile Newton remained at home he laid the foundations for differential and integral calculus, several years before its independent discovery by Leibni;. 2he 0method of flu-ions0, as he termed it, was based on his crucial insight that the integration of a function is merely the inverse procedure to differentiating it. 2aking differentiation as the basic operation, Newton produced simple analytical methods that unified many separate techni5ues previously developed to solve apparently unrelated problems such as finding areas, tangents, the lengths of curves and the ma-ima and minima of functions. Newton0s *e Methodis Serierum et ,lu-ionum was written in !"#! but Newton failed to get it published and it did not appear in print until 4ohn Colson produced an English translation in !#)". hen the Bniversity of Cambridge reopened after the plague in !""#, Newton put himself forward as a candidate for a fellowship. &n Dctober he was elected to a minor fellowship at 2rinity College but, after being awarded his 6aster0s ?egree, he was elected to a ma=or fellowship in 4uly !"". which allowed him to dine at the 1ellows0 2able. &n 4uly !""% Barrow tried to ensure that Newton0s mathematical achievements became known to the world. 'e sent Newton0s te-t *e +nalysi to Collins in London writing:< FNe#tonG brought me the other day some papers, #herein he set do#n methods of calculating the dimensions of magnitudes li.e that of Mr 6ercator concerning the hyperbola, but ery general/ as also of resol ing e$uations/ #hich 0 suppose #ill please you/ and 0 shall send you them by the ne-t. Collins corresponded with all the leading mathematicians of the day so Barrow0s action should have led to 5uick recognition. Collins showed Brouncker, the @resident of the Aoyal 3ociety, Newton0s results (with the author0s permission, but after this Newton re5uested that his manuscript be returned. Collins could not give a detailed account but de 3lu;e and 8regory learnt something of Newton0s work through Collins. Barrow resigned the Lucasian chair in !""% to devote himself to divinity, recommending that Newton (still only 7# years old, be appointed in his place. 3hortly after this Newton visited London and twice met with Collins but, as he wrote to 8regory:<

... ha ing no more ac$uaintance #ith him 0 did not thin. it becoming to urge him to communicate anything. Newton0s first work as Lucasian @rofessor was on optics and this was the topic of his first lecture course begun in 4anuary !"#+. 'e had reached the conclusion during the two plague years that white light is not a simple entity. Every scientist since Aristotle had believed that white light was a basic single entity, but the chromatic aberration in a telescope lens convinced Newton otherwise. hen he passed a thin beam of sunlight through a glass prism Newton noted the spectrum of colours that was formed. 'e argued that white light is really a mi-ture of many different types of rays which are refracted at slightly different angles, and that each different type of ray produces a different spectral colour. Newton was led by this reasoning to the erroneous conclusion that telescopes using refracting lenses would always suffer chromatic aberration. 'e therefore proposed and constructed a reflecting telescope. &n !"#7 Newton was elected a fellow of the Aoyal 3ociety after donating a reflecting telescope. Also in !"#7 Newton published his first scientific paper on light and colour in the Philosophical Transactions of the )oyal Society. 2he paper was generally well received but 'ooke and 'uygens ob=ected to Newton0s attempt to prove, by e-periment alone, that light consists of the motion of small particles rather than waves. 2he reception that his publication received did nothing to improve Newton0s attitude to making his results known to the world. 'e was always pulled in two directions, there was something in his nature which wanted fame and recognition yet another side of him feared criticism and the easiest way to avoid being criticised was to publish nothing. Certainly one could say that his reaction to criticism was irrational, and certainly his aim to humiliate 'ooke in public because of his opinions was abnormal. 'owever, perhaps because of Newton0s already high reputation, his corpuscular theory reigned until the wave theory was revived in the !%th century. Newton0s relations with 'ooke deteriorated further when, in !"#$, 'ooke claimed that Newton had stolen some of his optical results. Although the two men made their peace with an e-change of polite letters, Newton turned in on himself and away from the Aoyal 3ociety which he associated with 'ooke as one of its leaders. 'e delayed the publication of a full account of his optical researches until after the death of 'ooke in !#+). Newton0s Optic.s appeared in !#+*. &t dealt with the theory of light and colour and with i. ii. iii. investigations of the colours of thin sheets 0Newton0s rings0 and diffraction of light.

2o e-plain some of his observations he had to use a wave theory of light in con=unction with his corpuscular theory. Another argument, this time with the English 4esuits in LiJge over his theory of colour, led to a violent e-change of letters, then in !"#. Newton appears to have suffered a

nervous breakdown. 'is mother died in the following year and he withdrew further into his shell, mi-ing as little as possible with people for a number of years. Newton0s greatest achievement was his work in physics and celestial mechanics, which culminated in the theory of universal gravitation. By !""" Newton had early versions of his three laws of motion. 'e had also discovered the law giving the centrifugal force on a body moving uniformly in a circular path. 'owever he did not have a correct understanding of the mechanics of circular motion. Newton0s novel idea of !""" was to imagine that the Earth0s gravity influenced the 6oon, counter< balancing its centrifugal force. 1rom his law of centrifugal force and Hepler0s third law of planetary motion, Newton deduced the inverse<s5uare law. &n !"#% Newton corresponded with 'ooke who had written to Newton claiming:< ... that the +ttraction al#ays is in a duplicate proportion to the *istance from the %enter )eciprocall ... 6 Nauenberg writes an account of the ne-t events:< +fter his !"#% correspondence #ith 'ooke, Ne#ton, by his o#n account, found a proof that 1epler2s areal la# #as a conse$uence of centripetal forces, and he also sho#ed that if the orbital cur e is an ellipse under the action of central forces then the radial dependence of the force is in erse s$uare #ith the distance from the centre. 2his discovery showed the physical significance of Hepler0s second law. &n !".* 'alley, tired of 'ooke0s boasting F6 NauenbergG:< ... as.ed Ne#ton #hat orbit a body follo#ed under an in erse s$uare force, and Ne#ton replied immediately that it #ould be an ellipse. 3o#e er in *e Motu.. he only ga e a proof of the con erse theorem that if the orbit is an ellipse the force is in erse s$uare. The proof that in erse s$uare forces imply conic section orbits is s.etched in %or. ! to Prop. !) in Boo. ! of the second and third editions of the Principia, but not in the first edition. 'alley persuaded Newton to write a full treatment of his new physics and its application to astronomy. Dver a year later (!".#, Newton published the Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica or Principia as it is always known. 2he Principia is recognised as the greatest scientific book ever written. Newton analysed the motion of bodies in resisting and non<resisting media under the action of centripetal forces. 2he results were applied to orbiting bodies, pro=ectiles, pendulums, and free<fall near the Earth. 'e further demonstrated that the planets were attracted toward the 3un by a force varying as the inverse s5uare of the distance and generalised that all heavenly bodies mutually attract one another.

1urther generalisation led Newton to the law of universal gravitation:< ... all matter attracts all other matter #ith a force proportional to the product of their masses and in ersely proportional to the s$uare of the distance bet#een them. Newton e-plained a wide range of previously unrelated phenomena: the eccentric orbits of comets, the tides and their variations, the precession of the Earth0s a-is, and motion of the 6oon as perturbed by the gravity of the 3un. 2his work made Newton an international leader in scientific research. 2he Continental scientists certainly did not accept the idea of action at a distance and continued to believe in ?escartes0 vorte- theory where forces work through contact. 'owever this did not stop the universal admiration for Newton0s technical e-pertise. 4ames && became king of 8reat Britain on " 1ebruary !".$. 'e had become a convert to the Aoman Catholic church in !""% but when he came to the throne he had strong support from Anglicans as well as Catholics. 'owever rebellions arose, which 4ames put down but he began to distrust @rotestants and began to appoint Aoman Catholic officers to the army. 'e then went further, appointing only Catholics as =udges and officers of state. henever a position at D-ford or Cambridge became vacant, the king appointed a Aoman Catholic to fill it. Newton was a staunch @rotestant and strongly opposed to what he saw as an attack on the Bniversity of Cambridge. hen the Hing tried to insist that a Benedictine monk be given a degree without taking any e-aminations or swearing the re5uired oaths, Newton wrote to the Iice<Chancellor:< Be courageous and steady to the &a#s and you cannot fail. 2he Iice<Chancellor took Newton0s advice and was dismissed from his post. 'owever Newton continued to argue the case strongly preparing documents to be used by the Bniversity in its defence. 'owever illiam of Drange had been invited by many leaders to bring an army to England to defeat 4ames. illiam landed in November !".. and 4ames, finding that @rotestants had left his army, fled to 1rance. 2he Bniversity of Cambridge elected Newton, now famous for his strong defence of the university, as one of their two members to the Convention @arliament on !$ 4anuary !".%. 2his @arliament declared that 4ames had abdicated and in 1ebruary !".% offered the crown to illiam and 6ary. Newton was at the height of his standing < seen as a leader of the university and one of the most eminent mathematicians in the world. 'owever, his election to @arliament may have been the event which let him see that there was a life in London which might appeal to him more than the academic world in Cambridge. After suffering a second nervous breakdown in !"%), Newton retired from research. 2he reasons for this breakdown have been discussed by his biographers and many theories have been proposed: chemical poisoning as a result of his alchemy e-periments9 frustration with his researches9 the ending of a personal friendship with 1atio de ?uillier, a 3wiss<born mathematician resident in London9 and problems resulting from his religious beliefs. Newton himself blamed lack of sleep but this was almost certainly a

symptom of the illness rather than the cause of it. 2here seems little reason to suppose that the illness was anything other than depression, a mental illness he must have suffered from throughout most of his life, perhaps made worse by some of the events we have =ust listed. Newton decided to leave Cambridge to take up a government position in London becoming arden of the Aoyal 6int in !"%" and 6aster in !"%%. 'owever, he did not resign his positions at Cambridge until !#+!. As 6aster of the 6int, adding the income from his estates, we see that Newton became a very rich man. 1or many people a position such as 6aster of the 6int would have been treated as simply a reward for their scientific achievements. Newton did not treat it as such and he made a strong contribution to the work of the 6int. 'e led it through the difficult period of recoinage and he was particularly active in measures to prevent counterfeiting of the coinage. &n !#+) he was elected president of the Aoyal 3ociety and was re<elected each year until his death. 'e was knighted in !#+$ by >ueen Anne, the first scientist to be so honoured for his work. 'owever the last portion of his life was not an easy one, dominated in many ways with the controversy with Leibni; over which had invented the calculus. 8iven the rage that Newton had shown throughout his life when criticised, it is not surprising that he flew into an irrational temper directed against Leibni;. e have given details of this controversy in Leibni;0s biography and refer the reader to that article for details. @erhaps all that is worth relating here is how Newton used his position as @resident of the Aoyal 3ociety. &n this capacity he appointed an /impartial/ committee to decide whether he or Leibni; was the inventor of the calculus. 'e wrote the official report of the committee (although of course it did not appear under his name, which was published by the Aoyal 3ociety, and he then wrote a review (again anonymously, which appeared in the Philosophical Transactions of the )oyal Society. Newton0s assistant histon had seen his rage at first hand. 'e wrote:<

Ne#ton #as of the most fearful, cautious and suspicious temper that 0 e er .ne#. #rticle $%: 4 4 O2%onnor and ! , )obertson