Great Astronomers: Isaac Newton

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by Robert Stawell Ball
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Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1726) was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist and theologian who has been considered by many to be the greatest and most influential scientist who ever lived. His monograph Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, published in 1687, laid the foundations for most of classical mechanics. In this work, Newton described universal gravitation and the three laws of motion, which dominated the scientific view of the physical universe for the next three centuries. Newton showed that the motion of objects on Earth and that of celestial bodies is governed by the same set of natural laws: by demonstrating the consistency between Kepler's laws of planetary motion and his theory of gravitation he removed the last doubts about heliocentrism and advanced the scientific revolution. The Principia is generally considered to be one of the most important scientific books ever written, both due to the specific physical laws the work successfully described, and for its style, which assisted in setting standards for scientific publication down to the present time. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_newton)

This eBook is taken from a chapter in Sir Robert Stawell Ball's Great Astronomers (2nd edition, 1907).

About the Author

Sir Robert Stawell Ball FRS (1 July 1840 – 25 November 1913) was an Irish astronomer[1] who founded the screw theory.
He was the son of naturalist Robert Ball[2] and Amelia Gresley Hellicar. He was born in Dublin.[3]
Ball worked for Lord Rosse from 1865 to 1867. In 1867 he became Professor of Applied Mathematics at the Royal College of Science in Dublin. There he lectured on mechanics and published an elementary account of the science.[4]
In 1874 Ball was appointed Royal Astronomer of Ireland and Andrews Professor of Astronomy in the University of Dublin at Dunsink Observatory.[5]
Ball contributed to the science of kinematics by delineating the screw displacement:
When Ball and the screw theorists speak of screws they no longer mean actual cylindrical objects with helical threads cut into them but the possible motion of any body whatsoever, including that of the screw independently of the nut.[6]
Ball's treatise The Theory of Screws (1876) is now in the public domain.[7] His work on screw dynamics earned him in 1879 the Cunningham Medal of the Royal Irish Academy.[8]

In 1882 Popular Science Monthly carried his article "A Glimpse through the Corridors of Time".[9] The following year it carried his two-part article on "The Boundaries of Astronomy".[10]

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