Isaac Newton
Mathematician
25 December 1642
20 March 1727
Newton died at the age of 84 in 1727, a long life even by today’s standards. He lived through turbulent and interesting times: a civil war culminating in the beheading of Charles I; a plague that killed off an estimated fifteen percent of the population of London during one summer; a fire that devastated a major part of the capital and wars with Holland (3), Spain (3) and France (5) as well as the Act of Union, the first Jacobite rising and uprisings in the colonies (India and the United States). There was also a renaissance in the arts and sciences during his lifetime and the creation of, amongst others, the Royal Observatory and the Royal Society.
In 1686 the Royal Society published Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, Newton’s magnum opus and arguably one of the most important scientific books ever written.
Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica
Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica
Newton’s personal copy of the first edition of the Principia, annotated for the second edition, held by the Wren Library, Trinity College.
At the time of his death, Newton was the most famous scientist in Britain and possibly Europe. His accomplishments were staggering and far reaching and still form the bedrock of many areas of mathematics. Even today, most of us are introduced to the notion of gravity and the concept of scientific laws with the story of Newton sitting in an orchard watching an apple fall from a tree. His contributions have only been found wanting as our understanding of either the very big or the infinitesimally small has proved too much for his Law of Universal Gravitation. However, his research and writings extended our understanding of colour and optics as well as calculus and the motions of the solar system, and it was Newton who firmly established the empirical pathway of hypothesis-experiment-conclusion. He also wrote widely on alchemy and religion and applied the same vigour to these two subjects. He kept copious notebooks with jottings of ideas, experiments and calculations, while also writing numerous papers and books during his life.
Newton was born in 1642 at Woolsthorpe Manor, about ten miles south of Grantham in Lincolnshire, near the Great North Road. Woolsthorpe is mentioned in the Domesday Book (1086), and the Manor dates from the 13th century. Over time, various families have owned the Manor and in 1623 Newton’s grandfather acquired it.
Newton’s father died about three months before Isaac was born. His mother remarried three years later, leaving Isaac to be brought up at the Manor by his maternal grandmother. Various accounts report that Isaac was a diffident youth who had a wide range of interests, excelled at his studies and was a skilled model maker, invariably improving on existing designs. The latter skill would be important when he was designing experiments and building apparatus, much of which he did himself. From the age of 12, he attended The King’s School in Grantham, where he excelled as a student and seemed to be driven by a competitive spirit. Following the death of her second husband his mother attempted to take him out of school so that he could learn to run the farm however, his headmaster successfully petitioned that he should be allowed to finish his education.
Detail of the Newton Silk Scarf, designed using diagrams and text from Newton’s copy of the Principia
In 1661, he was admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge as a subsizar, a type of student who paid for their accommodation, food and lectures by performing various (possibly menial) duties for the Fellows and wealthy students. At the time, undergraduate studies included Latin and Greek and studying natural philosophy. The latter adopted an Aristotelian approach, which teaches that the Earth is at the centre of the universe, and the planets and stars revolve around it, and, moreover, that everything has an order based on their elemental composition (earth, air, fire and water). Mathematics was also taught as a separate subject unconnected with the natural world. This was set against a quiet revolution that was happening elsewhere and especially in astronomy with the writings of Copernicus (1473-1543), Brahe (1546-1601), Kepler (1571-1630) and Galileo (1564-1642).
Newton received his BA in 1665 but he had to return to Woolthorpe Manor as the University was closed due to the outbreak of the Great Plague. This epidemic of bubonic plague was centred in large cities and towns but especially in London and killed an estimated 200,000 people between 1665-66. Newton spent two years at Woolsthorpe. During this time his notebooks reveal that he started developing his theories of calculus, optics and gravity.
He returned to Cambridge in 1667 to study for an MA and was elected a Fellow of Trinity College later the same year. He was awarded an MA in 1668 and became the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics the following year. Newton was only the second person to hold this post, established by Charles II in 1664 from a bequest of £100 per year by Henry Lucas, a clergyman, politician and philanthropist. The Chair has been described as one of the most prestigious academic chairs in the world, and has been held by such luminaries as Joseph Larmor, Charles Babbage, George Stokes, Paul Dirac and Stephen Hawking.
Newton was elected a Fellow of The Royal Society in 1672, aged 30 years. The Royal Society exists to “recognise, promote, and support excellence in science and to encourage the development and use of science for the benefit of humanity.” It is the world’s oldest scientific academy in continuous existence. In 1665, it first published Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, which is still published today. It is the preeminent learned society in the United Kingdom with 1600 Fellows and 140 Foreign Fellows.
Newton remained in Cambridge, and at Trinity, for about thirty years and continued to work and experiment further developing his ideas. However, he seemed reluctant to share them, only publishing when someone else was about to steal his thunder or when his colleagues coerced him.
Detail of the Newton Silk Tie, designed using diagrams and text from Newton’s copy of the Principia
In 1696, he moved to London to become the Warden to the Royal Mint and subsequently, the Master in 1703. He continued to modify and develop his ideas and spent his time between London and Cambridge, although he had given up his duties within the University by 1702.
Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica was first published in London in 1687 under the auspices of the Royal Society, and the title-page bears the imprimatur of its President at the time, Samuel Pepys.
Newton had spent many years developing the ideas presented in the Principia, and its publication, when he was 45 years old did not represent his final thoughts on the matter. He continued to make revisions to the text, some minor and others more substantial, throughout the next four decades, partly in the light of criticisms from his contemporaries and partly as a result of his developing views. Several surviving copies of the first edition bear his annotations, which range from corrections of minor printing errors to substantial rewriting. Two copies are particularly heavily annotated, and seem to have remained in Newton’s library as his main reference copies, gradually accumulating more revisions over the years until he was eventually persuaded to publish the second edition in 1713. One of these copies is now in the University Library at Cambridge and the other in the Library at Trinity College.
Isaac Newton’s death mask sitting between his books in the Wren Library
Newton died on 20 March 1727 without leaving a will, and with no immediate family. An inventory of his possessions was drawn up soon after his burial in Westminster Abbey, this records some 1896 books (valued at £270) and ‘one hundred weight of pamphlets and Wast[e] books’, namely, his working manuscripts.
Newton’s estate was divided among his eight half-nephews and nieces, and most of his papers passed to his half-niece Catherine Barton, whose daughter married the son of the first Earl of Portsmouth. Three generations later, in 1888, the then Earl of Portsmouth presented his copy to Cambridge University Library.
The whole of Newton’s remaining library was promptly sold by his estate to a London neighbour of Newton’s, John Huggins, the Warden of the Fleet Prison, who used them to furnish his son’s rectory at Chinnor in Oxfordshire. The next rector, Dr James Musgrave, took a little more care of the books, showing them off to interested visitors.
On Musgrave’s death in 1778, the books were transferred to Barnsley Park in Gloucestershire, which his son had inherited where they stayed until 1920, when a descendant of Musgrave sent most of the books to auction and most were sold at very low prices into the book trade as the auctioneer failed to mention that the papers were Newton’s personal notes and books. A good portion of the library remained with the booksellers Sotheran’s until the Second World War.
In 1930, the American philanthropist Edward Harkness established the Pilgrim Trust to support ‘the more urgent needs’ of the UK. In November 1942, in the midst of war, the Trust purchased Newton’s birthplace of Woolsthorpe Manor to enable it to become entrusted to the nation. This act of generosity led the historian G. M. Trevelyan, Master of Trinity College, to ask whether the Trust might likewise secure Newton’s library for posterity. They quickly obliged, and in 1943 the books were transported to Cambridge and shelved in the south-west corner of the Wren Library, where they remain to this day.
