Newtonianism after 300 years

Abstract

Very nearly 41 years ago the Royal Society organized very grand tercentenary celebrations of Newton’s birth, celebrations postponed by the war from their due date. There was a large and distinguished international gathering, all of whom went to Cambridge and a few to Grantham and Woolsthorpe. I suppose few of us here will be able to compare the character of the quatercentenary functions! To the best of my knowledge, the various events of the present year are the first largescale public commemorations of the publication of the Philosophiae naturalis Principia mathematica . It may be, of course, that the preparation of the very first attempt at Newtonian scholarship, Stephen Peter Rigaud’s Historical Essay on the First Publication of Sir Isaac Newton´s Principia , was stimulated by the 150th anniversary falling in the previous year. At the bicentenary (1887) there was a ceremony in the Chapel of Trinity College, Cambridge, when the physicist J. W. L. Glaisher gave an address, but for 1937 I have found only a single obscure Australian publication. Perhaps, however, that anniversary of half a century ago had something to do with the Royal Society’s plan of 1939 to edit Newton’s correspondence. The speakers celebrating Newton in 1946 were scientists of the greatest distinction, rather than professional historians of science. Among those attending the celebrations, however, were a number of men who have published historical studies: Andrade, Abetti, Brasch, Brodetsky, Whittaker, for example. H. W . Turnbull, who was to become the first editor of Newton’s correspondence, gave one lecture on Newton as a mathematician.