| Drew Brixen Dillman
II '01 (12/2/98) |
From the biography of Isaac Newton
given in ICCW on page 836: "He then returned to
Cambridge, and in 1699 succeeded Barrow as Lucasian
Professor of Mathematics. He was presently made Fellow of
the Royal Society..." If the goal of King Charles II
in granting the Society a charter (and setting the bounds
to where they could meet within a radius of London) was
to limit the interaction between two dangerous parties
(the minds of the Universities, and those of the Society)
it appears he failed miserably. Not only were the two
groups closely related, but appointment to a
professorship for Newton coincided with his Fellowship in
the Royal Society. Would it be accurate to say that
regardless of the theoretical bounds imposed on the Royal
Society, in practice it was just an open forum for all
members of the scientific world, with university
affiliations, or not?
|
| MSM (12/6/98) | Let me start by correcting the date given
by ICCW. Newton succeeded Barrow in 1669, not '99.
In 1672, he sent to the Royal Society a description of
his experiments with a prism and the theory of light he
had derived from them, namely that white light is a
composite of primary colors, separable by the prism. The
Society voted Newton to membership, but Robert Hooke
raised objections to the theory, and in disgust over the
resulting public dispute Newton attempted to withdraw
from the Society. The resignation was not accepted, but
Newton thenceforth had nothing to do with the group, even
in the years immediately following its publication of his
Principa mathematica in 1687. Only with Hooke's
death in 1705 was Newton ready to take active part in the
Society and to accept its presidency. By that time,
Newton has retired from his professorship at Cambridge
and moved to London to become head of the Royal Mint. Also by that
time, James II had already lost the throne Charles II
was trying to protect. That said, yes, it would be fair to say the Society was open to all, regardless of their institutional affiliation. But it remained in London, and its activities did not compete with those of the universities. |