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referred. But in that year he issued from his seclusion under
circumstances of considerable historical interest. King James the
Second attempted an invasion of the rights and privileges of the
University of Cambridge by issuing a command that Father Francis,
a Benedictine monk, should be received as a Master of Arts in the
University, without having taken the oaths of allegiance and
supremacy. With this arbitrary command the University sternly
refused to comply. The Vice-Chancellor was accordingly summoned
to answer for an act of contempt to the authority of the Crown.
Newton was one of nine delegates who were chosen to defend the
independence of the University before the High Court. They were
able to show that Charles the Second, who had issued a MANDAMUS
under somewhat similar circumstances, had been induced after due
consideration to withdraw it. This argument appeared
satisfactory, and the University gained their case. Newton’s next
step in public life was his election, by a narrow majority, as
member for the University, and during the years 1688 and 1689, he
seems to have attended to his parliamentary duties with
considerable regularity.
An incident which happened in 1692 was apparently the cause of
considerable disturbance in Newton’s equanimity, if not in his
health. He had gone to early morning chapel, leaving a lighted
candle among his papers on his desk. Tradition asserts that his
little dog “Diamond” upset the candle; at all events, when Newton
came back he found that many valuable papers had perished in a
conflagration. The loss of these manuscripts seems to have had a
serious effect. Indeed, it has been asserted that the distress
reduced Newton to a state of mental aberration for a considerable
time. This has, apparently, not been confirmed, but there is no
doubt that he experienced considerable disquiet, for in
writing on September 13th, 1693, to Mr. Pepys, he says:
“I am extremely troubled at the embroilment I am in, and have
neither ate nor slept well this twelvemonth, nor have my former
consistency of mind.”
Notwithstanding the fame which Newton had achieved, by the
publication of his, “Principia,” and by all his researches, the
State had not as yet taken any notice whatever of the most
illustrious man of science that this or any other country has ever
produced. Many of his friends had exerted themselves to procure
him some permanent appointment, but without success. It happened,
however, that Mr. Montagu, who had sat with Newton in Parliament,
was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1694. Ambitious of
distinction in his new office, Mr. Montagu addressed himself to
the improvement of the current coin, which was then in a very
debased condition. It fortunately happened that an opportunity
occurred of appointing a new official in the Mint; and Mr. Montagu
on the 19th of March, 1695, wrote to offer Mr. Newton the position
of warden. The salary was to be five or six hundred a year, and
the business would not require more attendance than Newton could
spare. The Lucasian professor accepted this post, and forthwith
entered upon his new duties.
The knowledge of physics which Newton had acquired by his
experiments was of much use in connection with his duties at the
Mint. He carried out the re-coinage with great skill in the
course of two years, and as a reward for his exertions, he was
appointed, in 1697, to the Mastership of the Mint, with a salary
between 1,200 Pounds and 1,500 Pounds per annum. In 1701 his
duties at the Mint being so engrossing, he resigned his Lucasian
professorship at Cambridge, and at the same time he had to
surrender his fellowship at Trinity College. This closed his
connection with the University of Cambridge. It should, however,
be remarked that at a somewhat earlier stage in his career he
was very nearly being appointed to an office which might have
enabled the University to retain the great philosopher within
its precincts. Some of his friends had almost succeeded in
securing his nomination to the Provostship of King’s College,
Cambridge; the appointment, however, fell through, inasmuch as
the statute could not be evaded, which required that the Provost
of King’s College should be in holy orders.
In those days it was often the custom for illustrious
mathematicians, when they had discovered a solution for some new
and striking problem, to publish that problem as a challenge to
the world, while withholding their own solution. A famous
instance of this is found in what is known as the Brachistochrone
problem, which was solved by John Bernouilli. The nature of this
problem may be mentioned. It was to find the shape of the curve
along which a body would slide down from one point (A) to another
point (B) in the shortest time. It might at first be thought that
the straight line from A to B, as it is undoubtedly the shortest
distance between the points, would also be the path of quickest
descent; but this is not so. There is a curved line, down which a
bead, let us say, would run on a smooth wire from A to B in a
shorter time than the same bead would require to run down the
straight wire. Bernouilli’s problem was to find out what that
curve must be. Newton solved it correctly; he showed that the
curve was a part of what is termed a cycloid—that is to say, a
curve like that which is described by a point on the rim of a
carriage-wheel as the wheel runs along the ground. Such was
Newton’s geometrical insight that he was able to transmit a
solution of the problem on the day after he had received it, to
the President of the Royal Society.
In 1703 Newton, whose world wide fame was now established, was
elected President of the Royal Society. Year after year he was
reelected to this distinguished position, and his tenure, which
lasted twenty-five years, only terminated with his life.
It was in discharge of his duties as President of the Royal
Society that Newton was brought into contact with Prince George of
Denmark. In April, 1705, the Queen paid a visit to Cambridge as
the guest of Dr. Bentley, the then Master of Trinity, and in a
court held at Trinity Lodge on April 15th, 1705, the honour of
knighthood was conferred upon the discoverer of gravitation.
Urged by illustrious friends, who sought the promotion of
knowledge, Newton gave his attention to the publication of a new
edition of the “Principia.” His duties at the Mint, however,
added to the supreme duty of carrying on his original
investigations, left him but little time for the more ordinary
task of the revision. He was accordingly induced to associate
with himself for this purpose a distinguished young mathematician,
Roger Coates, a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, who had
recently been appointed Plumian Professor of Astronomy. On July
27th, 1713, Newton, by this time a favourite at Court, waited on
the Queen, and presented her with a copy of the new edition of the
“Principia.”
Throughout his life Newton appears to have been greatly interested
in theological studies, and he specially devoted his attention to
the subject of prophecy. He left behind him a manuscript on the
prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John, and he also
wrote various theological papers. Many other subjects had from
time to time engaged his attention. He studied the laws of heat;
he experimented in pursuit of the dreams of the Alchymist; while
the philosopher who had revealed the mechanism of the heavens
found occasional relaxation in trying to interpret hieroglyphics.
In the last few years of his life he bore with fortitude a painful
ailment, and on Monday, March 20th, 1727, he died in the
eighty-fifth year of his age. On Tuesday, March 28th, he was
buried in Westminster Abbey.
Though Newton lived long enough to receive the honour that his
astonishing discoveries so justly merited, and though for many
years of his life his renown was much greater than that of any
of his contemporaries, yet it is not too much to say that, in
the years which have since elapsed, Newton’s fame has been ever
steadily advancing, so that it never stood higher than it does
at this moment.
We hardly know whether to admire more the sublime discoveries at
which he arrived, or the extraordinary character of the
intellectual processes by which those discoveries were reached.
Viewed from either standpoint, Newton’s “Principia” is
incomparably the greatest work on science that has ever yet been
produced.
[PLATE: SIR ISAAC NEWTON’S SUN-DIAL IN THE ROYAL SOCIETY.]
FLAMSTEED.
Among the manuscripts preserved at Greenwich Observatory are
certain documents in which Flamsteed gives an account of his own
life. We may commence our sketch by quoting the following passage
from this autobiography:—“To keep myself from idleness, and to
recreate myself, I have intended here to give some account of my
life, in my youth, before the actions thereof, and the providences
of God therein, be too far passed out of my memory; and to observe
the accidents of all my years, and inclinations of my mind, that
whosoever may light upon these papers may see I was not so wholly
taken up, either with my father’s business or my mathematics, but
that I both admitted and found time for other as weighty
considerations.”
The chief interest which attaches to the name of Flamsteed arises
from the fact that he was the first of the illustrious series of
Astronomers Royal who have presided over Greenwich Observatory.
In that capacity Flamsteed was able to render material assistance
to Newton by providing him with the observations which his lunar
theory required.
John Flamsteed was born at Denby, in Derbyshire, on the 19th of
August, 1646. His mother died when he was three years old, and
the second wife, whom his father took three years later, only
lived until Flamsteed was eight, there being also two younger
sisters. In his boyhood the future astronomer tells us that he
was very fond of those romances which affect boy’s imagination,
but as he writes, “At twelve years of age I left all the wild ones
and betook myself to read the better sort of them, which, though
they were not probable, yet carried no seeming impossibility in
the picturing.” By the time Flamsteed was fifteen years old he
had embarked in still more serious work, for he had read
Plutarch’s “Lives,” Tacitus’ “Roman History,” and many other books
of a similar description. In 1661 he became ill with some serious
rheumatic affection, which obliged him to be withdrawn from
school. It was then for the first time that he received the
rudiments of a scientific education. He had, however, attained
his sixteenth year before he made any progress in arithmetic.
He tells us how his father taught him “the doctrine of fractions,”
and “the golden rule of three”—lessons which he seemed to have
learned easily and quickly. One of the books which he read at
this time directed his attention to astronomical instruments, and
he was thus led to construct for himself a quadrant, by which he
could take some simple astronomical observations. He further
calculated a table to give the sun’s altitudes at different hours,
and thus displayed those tastes for practical astronomy which he
lived to develop so greatly. It appears that these scientific
studies were discountenanced by his father, who designed that his
son should follow a business career. Flamsteed’s natural
inclination, however, forced him to prosecute astronomical work,
notwithstanding the impediments that lay in his path.
Unfortunately, his constitutional delicacy seems to have
increased, and he had just completed his eighteenth year, “when,”
to use his own words, “the winter came on and thrust me again into
the chimney, whence the heat and the dryness of the preceding
summer had happily once
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