IN STARRY SKIES

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 55, 2 September 1926, Page 16

IN STARRY SKIES

* NEWTON (By "Omega Centauri.") "If I saw farther, 'twas because I stood On giant shoulders," wrote the king of thought, Tod proud of tia great line to blight the toils Of his forbears. He turned to their dim past, Their fading victories and their fond defeats, And knelt as at an altar, drawing all Their strengths into his own; and so went forth With all their glory shining in his face, To win new victories for the ago to come. So, where Copernicus had destroyed the dream We called our world; where Galileo watched Those ancient firmaments molt, a thin blue smoke Into a vaster night; where Kepler heard Only stray fragments, isolated chords Of that tremendous music which should bind All things anew in one, Newton arose And carried on their fire. —Alfred Noyes. Almost exactly a year after Galileo's death Newton was born. His birthday is generally given as Christmas Day, 1642, but in the new style which was at that time adopted largely on the Continent, this was 4th January, 1643. This was almost a hundred years from the day on which Copernicus received on his death bed a copy o^ his great book, "De Eevolutionibus ' Orbium Celestium." Isaac Newton was a weak and sickly child, and during several of his early illnesses he was not expected to recover. His father had died some months before he ■ was born. Two or three years later his mother married the Eev. Barnabas Smith, and Isaac was left in charge of his grandmother at the ancestral farm at Woolsthorpo, near Grantham. He was naturally expected to become a farmer; but, as in the case of so many other great men, his genius forced him into an entirely different way of life. He showed no precocity, and his genius was rather slow in its development. He was sent at the ago of twelve to the King's School at Grantham, and took a very low place in the lowest class but one, until an accident made him turn over a new leaf. He was attacked by a bigger boy, and in the fight against odds which ensued he gained an unexpected victory. This made him determine to beat his rival in school as well as out. He started work and soon rose to tho top of his class. "Whilst a boy he shojsved considerable skill in constructing mechanical models and contrivances, such as windmills, water clocks, kites, and sundials. He even made a four-wheeled carriage to be driven by the rider. Whoa he was fourteen his stepfather died, and his mother returned to Woolsthorpe. Newton was withdrawn from school to take up his duties on the farm. He showed neither, inclination nor ability for this kind of work, but gradually became more and more fond of books and study. Whilst at Grantham he had lodged with Mr. Clark, a chemist, and now, when he visited Grantham on market days, ho contrived to spend some hours amongst the books in Mr. Clark's house. His mother soon realised that he was making but a poor farmer, but she had not yet detected his remarkable aptitude in other directions. Fortunately, she consulted her brother William Ayscough. Seeking Isaac on the farm, he found him studying mathematics. Being a Cambridge man himself he urged the desirability of sending Isaac there, and ultimately prevailed on his mother to do so. So, much to his delight, young Newton returned to Grantham to prepare for a university career. On sth June, 1660, he was enrolled as an undergraduate of Trinity College, Cambridge. He atonce showed the remarkable mental powers of which he had hitherto been unconscious. Fortunately his remarkable abilities were recognised by Dr. Isaac Barrow, the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, and the intercourse which followed ripened into friendship. Newton soon mastered the usual books on mathematics. .Euclid's elements he found very easy, Deseartes's geometry rather harder. Kepler's Optics also found a place in his early studies, and this may have led to his researches on colour. He certainly bought a prism for his experiments in 1664. During this year also he won a university scholarship. In 1665 he obtained his B.A. degree. Berry, in his "History of Astronomy," divides Newton's life into three periods. The first, covering 22 years, was the time of preparation, consisting of his boyhood and his undergraduate .life. The second, of equal length, was the astonishingly productive period, in which all of his great discoveries were made. The third period, nearly as long as the other two put together, was mainly occupied by official work and studies not so strictly scientific. ' In 1665 the university was closed on account of the plague, and Newton returned to his home, where he stayed in retirement for two years, momentous years in the history of science. In 1665 he discovered the method of finding the approximate values of infinite series, and of expanding into a series any power of a binomial. In the same year he developed the direct method of fluxions the original form of the differential calculus. In 1666 he discovered the composite character of light and formulated his theory of colour. During the same year ho invented the inverse method of fluxions, now the integral calculus; and began to investigate the force of gravity "which held tho moon in its orbit, and even found that the inverse square law answered fairly well. That all these achievements were • compressed into the two years of plague make us wish that Newton had enjoyed more years of leisure. In 1667 he returned to Cambridge as a fellow of Trinity College, and in 1669, Dr. Isaac Barrow retired from the Professorship of Mathematics. Newton, who was then 26 years of age, was appointed in his place. For twenty-five years Newton filled this position with credit and honour, but the gain to the world might have been greater had he been free from his official duties. Newton's only love story is a sad one. In Mr. Clark's house at Grantham, when he was a boy, there were three girls whose company gave him Sl° aX Pleasure- His friendship for one o± them, Miss Storey, who was two or three years younger than himself, gradually developed into a stronger passion. Unfortunately he was then too poor to marry, and, retiring as he was by nature, probably never one moment thought of asking tho lady to wait for him. She was twice married, but Newton and she never, throughout their long lives, forgot one another, and in old age they confessed their mutual teelings. Newton regularly visited his old love, then Mrs. Vincent, whenever he went to Lincolnshire, and he was fortunately able to free her from some pecuniary difficulties. His loneliness became pathetic during the last few years of his life. "Your letter, on my eightieth birthday, wakes Memories, like violets, in this London gloom. You have never failed, for more than three-store years,

To send these annual greetings from the haunts Where you and I-were boy and girl together. A day must come—it cannot now be far— When I shall have no power to thank you for them, So let me tell you now that, all my life, They have come to me with healing in their wings, Like birds from home, birds from the happy woods Above the Witham, whore you walked with me When you and I were young." —Alfred Noyes. Newton was remarkable for the unusually wide range of his researches and speculations. He wrote voluminous notes on all. subjects, but was very reluctant to publish anything, as he hated controversy. He did experimental work in chemistry as well as in heat and other branches of physics, but we are more concerned now with his most important studies in astronomy, optics, and mathematics. The latter he regarded as a tool to be used in research, and when it did not provide suitable means of dealing with a problem, he invented new methods to meet the case. His association with Dr. Barrow in the study of mathematics at a critical point in his career had far-reaching results. Their discussions led.to the development of the calculus. Newton's discovery of the composite character of white light, and of the unequal refrangibility of light of different colours, laid the foundation of spectrum analysis, although the extensions of Fraunhofer, Kirehoff, and others were essential to make it the powerful weapon it now is. It is unfortunate that Newton did not try the experiment of admitting the light through a narrow slit instead of a round hole, but the systematic way in which ho proved point by point was altogether admirable. He laboured on. He had no power to see How, after many years, when he was dead, Out of this new discovery men should make An instrument to explore the farthest stars And, delicately dividing their white rays, Divine what metals in thoir beauty burned, Extort red secrets from the heart of Mars, Or measure the molten iron in the sun. Ho bent himself to nearer, lowlier tasks; And seeing, first, that those deflected rays,' Though it was only by the faintest bloom Of colour, imperceptible to our eyes, Must dim the vision of Galileo's glass, He made his own new weapon of the sky—. That first reflecting telescope which should hold In its deep mirror, as in a breathless pool The undistorted image of a star. —Alfred Noyes. Newton's discoveries about light did not indicate any way of overcoming the defects due to chromatic aberration in lenses. Ho therefore constructed a reflecting telescope, probably the first one ever used, in IC6B. A reflecting telescope of different design had been suggested by and described by James Gregory five years earlier. In Gregory's type the light gathered by the mirror was reflected back to form the image through a hole in the centre of the mirror. Newton placed a small plane mirror at an angle of 45 degrees, with tho axis of the reflector, so that the image could be viewed from tho side of- the telescope. His first instrument, though only one inch in diameter, magnified forty times. The next which was presented +o the Royal Society in 1671, was a much finer instrument.