D. C. Ipsen

Straightforward, 96 page biography of Isaac Newton, with a focus on the science. There are 13 small chapters, and numerous black and white illustrations, many taken from contemporary sources. Published in 1986 in the US and the UK. No remarks about Newton's possible homosexuality, and unusual emphasis on his relationship with Anne Storey when he was a boy. Describes, without the same enthusiasm as modern books, the year he went crazy and his fights w/ other scientists. Leave's out his ardent pursuit of counterfeiters when Master of the Mint entirely. There are very few quotations from original sources.

Detailed review:

1. Farmer's Son
Newton's youth, simply told, with a map of England and Scotland and another map showing the area around his birthplace. Illustrations of his birthplace and the school in Grantham.

2. Cambridge Scholar
Newton's Cambridge career from subsizar to Lucasian professor is all covered in this chapter. Includes the two years he spent at home during the plague.

3. The Key to Color
Newton does his famous prism experiments while at home. He needs to combat the theory that passing through a prism adds colors to the sun's light. Newton does his pinhole experiment, passing the light through a prism with flat side up and point down. This bends all the light upward, but the violet light much more so. Newton passes one color of light through a second prism, showing that the light is not altered this time. This does pretty well refute the belief that passing through the light adds colors. Newton coined the word spectrum for the image of the spread out light. He also liked seven colors in the spectrum, for the seven planets, apparently. Newton comes up with a theory of complementary colors, which is not really well explained by the book. He also notices that it is possible to combine two colors from the spectrum and get colors that are not in the spectrum.

4. Fame and Frustration
Newton addresses the problem of refraction in telescopes by designing and building a reflecting telescope. The Royal Society are impressed with the telescope but Newton's theory of light collides with Robert Hooke's. The author points out that chromatic aberration can be reduced by using multiple lenses with different densities, which can be combined to cancel out the refraction. This is done in the Galileoscope that I own. Newton is so annoyed by all the argumentation that he waits 30 years, and until Hooke is dead, to publish his "Opticks".

5. Ideas from an Apple
Newton does some calculations to convince himself that the fall of an apple and the orbit of the moon can be explained by the same inverse square law of gravity. He considers an experiment involving dropping a ball from a great height. The ball, is actually moving faster than the surface of the earth, so its eventually landing place should be a little in front of the spot that it was above in the direction of the earth's rotation. Hooke shows Newton up by disclosing a private letter in which Newton has made a mistake, and Newton is annoyed.

6. Questions over Coffee
Halley travels down to Cambridge to ask Newton about elliptical orbits and the inverse square law. Newton can't find his old notes but eventually sends Halley a letter. Halley starts passing it around in London and everybody is fascinated. He then goes back to Cambridge and eventually persuades Newton to publish a book, does most of the legwork, and finances the publication. Newton writes in Latin, and the book is in three parts. He takes about three years.

7. The Principia

The preface contains Newton's three laws. (1) body in motion will continue in motion unless acted upon --- he attributes to Galileo. (2) is the important one, F = ma. (3) every action has an equal and opposite reaction, like (1) can be derived from (2). Dunno why I was taught all three in physics class. At the center of the earth, you would have zero weight. This contradicts Hooke's assertion, and is good for another fight, presumably. But interestingly, your weight would increase for a while as you burrowed toward the center of the earth, because your distance from the core, which is the densest part, would decrease. Why is the core so dense? Because it is compressed by the earth's outer layer, attracted to it by the force of gravity, until some kind of equilibrium is reached. Newton also measured the speed of sound. He called the third book of the Principia "The System of the World". He determined that the earth must be a bit squashed between the poles and bulging at the center. He showed how the moon and the sun working together cause the tides, but failed to correctly account for the delay. Newton discusses comets and their orbits. He also correctly explained the precession of the equinoxes.

8. Newton's Comet
Halley identifies the medium period comet now named after him, using idea from the Principia.

9. First Approximation
Einsten explains the strange behavior of Mercury's orbit. I think the author makes a mistake here. Einstein's solution involved the bending of light near a massive body, making Mercury, which can only be observed, seem to behave differently from the way it was predicted to behave.

10. The Clash over Calculus
The fight with Leibniz, the consequences to English mathematics.

11. The Alchemist
Describes Newton's alchemical interest and also his study of cooling. The difference in temperature between a hot body and its surroundings decreases by an equal fraction over equal periods of time. Newton believe that it was possible to extrapolate to determine temperatures of a body much higher than could be directly measured. The possibility that exposure to mercury might have effected its mental health.

12. The Bible Student
Newton's religiosity. His work in Biblical Chronology. Vague remarks about Newton's religous ideas possibly inviting persecution.

13. The Public Servant
Newton becomes MP, Warden of the Mint, Master of the Mint, President of the Royal Society. He also publishes his Opticks, and gets into a fight with Flamsteed, the Astronomer Royal.… (altro)