When Newton left Cambridge in April 1696 to take up, at the age of 53, a new career at the London Mint, he did not entirely 'leave off Mathematicks' as he so often publicly declared. This last volume of his mathematical papers presents the extant record of the investigations which for one reason and another he pursued during the last quarter of his life. In January 1697 Newton was tempted to respond to two challenges issued by Johann Bernoulli to the international community of mathematicians, one the celebrated problem of identifying the brachistochrone; both he resolved within the space of an evening, producing an elegant construction of the cycloid which he identified to be the curve of fall in least time. In the autumn of 1703, the appearance of work on 'inverse fluxions' by George Cheyne similarly provoked him to prepare his own ten-year-old treatise De Quadratura Curvarum for publication, and more importantly to write a long introduction to it where he set down what became his best-known statement of the nature and purpose of his fluxional calculus.
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Höhe: 244 mm
Breite: 170 mm
Dicke: 41 mm
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978-0-521-04591-9 (9780521045919)
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Schweitzer Klassifikation
Sir Isaac Newton (25 December 1642 - 20 March 1726/27) was an English mathematician, physicist, astronomer, theologian, and author (described in his own day as a "natural philosopher") who is widely recognised as one of the most influential scientists of all time and as a key figure in the scientific revolution. His book Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy), first published in 1687, laid the foundations of classical mechanics. Newton also made seminal contributions to optics, and shares credit with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz for developing the infinitesimal calculus.
In Principia, Newton formulated the laws of motion and universal gravitation that formed the dominant scientific viewpoint until it was superseded by the theory of relativity. Newton used his mathematical description of gravity to prove Kepler's laws of planetary motion, account for tides, the trajectories of comets, the precession of the equinoxes and other phenomena, eradicating doubt about the Solar System's heliocentricity. He demonstrated that the motion of objects on Earth and celestial bodies could be accounted for by the same principles. Newton's inference that the Earth is an oblate spheroid was later confirmed by the geodetic measurements of Maupertuis, La Condamine, and others, convincing most European scientists of the superiority of Newtonian mechanics over earlier systems.Newton built the first practical reflecting telescope and developed a sophisticated theory of colour based on the observation that a prism separates white light into the colours of the visible spectrum. His work on light was collected in his highly influential book Opticks, published in 1704. He also formulated an empirical law of cooling, made the first theoretical calculation of the speed of sound and introduced the notion of a Newtonian fluid. In addition to his work on calculus, as a mathematician Newton contributed to the study of power series, generalised the binomial theorem to non-integer exponents, developed a method for approximating the roots of a function, and classified most of the cubic plane curves.
Newton was a fellow of Trinity College and the second Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge. He was a devout but unorthodox Christian who privately rejected the doctrine of the Trinity. Unusually for a member of the Cambridge faculty of the day, he refused to take holy orders in the Church of England. Beyond his work on the mathematical sciences, Newton dedicated much of his time to the study of alchemy and biblical chronology, but most of his work in those areas remained unpublished until long after his death. Politically and personally tied to the Whig party, Newton served two brief terms as Member of Parliament for the University of Cambridge, in 1689-90 and 1701-02. He was knighted by Queen Anne in 1705 and spent the last three decades of his life in London, serving as Warden (1696-1700) and Master (1700-1727) of the Royal Mint, as well as president of the Royal Society (1703-1727).
Part I. Solutions to Challenge-Problems, Revisions of Earlier Researches, and General Retrospections: 1. The Twin Problems of Bernoulli's 1697 'Programma' solved; 2. The 'De Quadratura Curvarum' Revised for Publication; 3. Miscellaneous Writings on Mathematics; 4. The 'Method of [Finite] Differences'; 5. The 'De Quadratura' Amplified as an 'Analysis per Quantitates Fluentes et Earum Momenta'; 6. Proposition X of the Principa's Second Book Reworked; 7. Response to Bernoulli's Second Problem; 8. Analysis and Synthsis: Newton's Declaration of the Manner of their Application in the 'Principia'; 9. Minor Compliments to the 'Arithemetica Universalis'; Part II. Newton's Varied Efforts to Substantiate His Claims to Calculus Priority: Appendix 1; Appendix 2; Appendix 3; Appendix 4; Appendix 5; Appendix 6; Appendix 7; Appendix 8; Appendix 9; Appendix 10; Index of Names
