Newton's Letters

Abstract

IN Osiris (7, 523–555; 1939) M. Jean Polseneer, whose interest in the subject is well known, has reproduced some nine letters from Newton's unpublished correspondence. Four documents are shown in reduced facsimile, and all are accompanied by explanatory notes. The first four letters, between Newton and Oldenburg, are taken from the Portsmouth Collection in the University Library, Cambridge. The next two, between Newton and Hooke, are in the Library of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania at Philadelpliia. Of all these the main theme is optical. Two other letters between Newton and Hooke come from the Pierpont Morgan Library in Now York; their subject-matter is of very minor interest. For the period covered by these eight letters (1672–78) little original material bearing on Newton's life has been published. The ninth document is a joint report signed by Newton and Halley on the performance of a magnetic needle. This is an official paper dated 1712, and preserved in the Public Record Office. It is two years since M. Pelseneer, writing in Giel et Terre, pointed out with a reference to Stukeloy's Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton's Life, edited by A. H. White and then lately published, that the story of Newton and the apple certainly did not originate in the fertile imagination of Voltaire.