March 10, 1997

UCSC physicist organizes London symposium on Isaac Newton

By Theobolt Leung

Arguably one of the most influential books ever written, Isaac Newton's Principia stands as the foundation for much of modern science. Yet, with the release of editions of Newton's other papers and letters, scholars are finding that there is still more to learn from and about the 300-year-old book.

A symposium on these latest insights, jointly sponsored by the Royal Society and the History of Science Society (U.S.), will be held at the Royal Society in London on Friday, March 21. Distinguished scholars from both the humanities and the sciences will speak at the daylong discussion. The meeting is being organized by physicists J. Bruce Brackenridge of Lawrence University, Richard H. Dalitz of Oxford University, and Michael Nauenberg (photo) of UCSC.

Newton was the first to demonstrate that one could mathematically predict the future of a physical system, in essence initiating science as we know it today. Indeed, author John Simmons ranked Newton first in his 1996 book, The Scientific 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Scientists, Past and Present. But while much has been written on Newton and his work since his death in 1727, how he arrived at his conclusions remains clouded. "We really don't know much," said Nauenberg, "about how he developed his ideas."

The publication of Newton's correspondence, his mathematical papers, and a variorum edition of the Principia, however, has kindled a new comprehension of his work. The volumes have made accessible the foundations of Newton's ideas, allowing more scholars to participate in the discussion. "No longer must these items be restricted to the few scholars who had access to the collections of a few leading libraries," said Brackenridge.

Brackenridge, currently at the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology, and Nauenberg, a professor emeritus of physics, have been investigating the controversy of how and when Newton arrived at his models of planetary motion--the bedrock of modern astronomy.

"In the late 1600s," said Nauenberg, "the $64,000 question was: How did planets revolve around the sun?" A British contemporary and rival of Newton's, Robert Hooke, had some ideas but lacked the mathematics to implement them. After years of fruitless contemplation, he sent some letters to Newton, asking, in effect, for some mathematical help. Said Nauenberg, "Newton then solved the problem, but he refused to give any credit to Hooke for his seminal suggestions."

Nauenberg has focused his mathematics and physics expertise on diagrams from that exchange. He has pieced together a solution to the puzzle of how Newton developed orbital dynamics with some crucial assistance from Hooke. He also has found that Newton outlined in his unpublished papers several modern methods in celestial mechanics--methods generally attributed to later great mathematicians like Euler, Laplace, and Lagrange. This explains how Newton obtained several important results presented--but not derived--in his Principia.

The symposium will allow scholars to present their research in different areas of Newton's work. It also is intended as a tribute to those who have made Newton's documents available to all, including Rupert Hall, coeditor of the correspondence of Isaac Newton; D. T. Whiteside, editor of Newton's mathematical papers; and I. B. Cohen, coeditor of the variorum edition of the Principia.

Nauenberg hopes the symposium will throw a more human light on Newton's science. "The misunderstanding of the sciences in the humanities has reached terrible proportions," he said. "History is the badly needed bridge between the two."

The following talks will be presented at the symposium:

• I. Bernard Cohen, Harvard University:
  "Newton in Historical Perspective"

• Alan E. Shapiro, University of Minnesota:
  "Newton's Experimental Investigation of Diffraction for the Optiks"

• J. Bruce Brackenridge, Lawrence University:
  "Newton's Dynamics: The Diagram as a Diagnostic Device"

• George E. Smith, Tufts University:
  "Fluid Resistance: Why Did Newton Change His Mind?"

• John G. Fauvel, Open University:
  "Newton's Mathematical Language"

• Alan Cook, Selwyn College:
  "Success and Failure in Newton's Lunar Theory"

• Michael Nauenberg, UCSC:
  "Newton's Perturbation Methods for Celestial Mechanics"

• Curtis Wilson, St. John's College:
  "From Kepler to Newton: Telling the Tale"

• A. Rupert Hall, Imperial College, London, and D. T. Whiteside, Cambridge University, will comment and respond.

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