A Compleat System of Opticks

Robert Smith (1689 1768) was one of the most distinguished Cambridge men of his day, holding the Plumian professorship of astronomy from 1716 to 1760. A Fellow of the Royal Society, he suceeded Richard Bentley as Master of Trinity College, and became Vice-Chancellor of the University. At his death he left bequests to endow the "Smith's Prizes" prizes still awarded to research students in mathematics, theoretical physics and applied mathematics at Cambridge University. Robert Smith published his magnum opus, "A Compleat System of Opticks", in 1738. It was designed for use as a university textbook and it proved to be one of the most authoritative surveys of optical theory of the time a time when optics was a very fertile meeting-ground for natural scientists and philosophers. Based on Newton's suggestion in the "Queries" in the third book of his "Opticks" (1717), Smith argued that light consisted of very small fast-moving particles of matter, and that these particles interacted not just by impact but also by attractive and replusive forces operating in "spaces of activity" around each particle.