by diane wilcox
According to the Gregorian Calendar, today is Newton's birthday. His birthday is also celebrated on 25 Dec, in keeping with its falling on that day under the Julian calendar.
As a science discussion point, this is a nice opportunity to put into perspective Neil deGrasse-Tyson's now most retweeted tweet, "On this day long ago, a child was born who, by age 30, would transform the world. Happy Birthday Isaac Newton b. Dec 25, 1642" which he posted on 25 Dec 2014.
I am not going to touch on the controversy which this sparked in the Christian community. Instead, there are some comments which can be made on the claim that "[Newton] by age 30, would transform the world". Three names immediately came to mind when I read that remark: Pierre de Fermat, Gottfried Liebnitz and John Barrow.
de Grasse-Tyson goes on to clarify on his FB page the following: "Everybody knows that Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus on December 25th. I think fewer people know that Isaac Newton shares the same birthday. Christmas day in England - 1642. And perhaps even fewer people know that before he turned 30, Newton had discovered the laws of motion, the universal law of gravitation, and invented integral and differential calculus. All of which served as the mechanistic foundation for the industrial revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries that would forever transform the world."
[https://www.facebook.com/notes/neil-degrasse-tyson/my-most-retweeted-tweet/10152533257800869]
These comments warrant some contextual clarification - in this blog I touch on some mathematical aspects of his work. In particular, I argue (as others have done) that Newton (1642-1726/7) did not invent the integral and differential calculus, but advanced it significantly to give us the fundamental theorem of calculus, together with Liebnitz (1646-1716).
Many of core ideas on the calculus were in currency at the time and Newton's work on tangents and areas, and the unification of these concepts, can be traced back to the work of Barrow, who was a geometer, Newton's mentor and had lectured on tangent and area problems. Barrow, in turn, was aware of the work of Descartes, Fermat, Wallis and others on the topic. The technique of computing anti-derivatives of polynomial functions for computing area can be attributed to Wallis and Cavalieri. Wallis and Fermat paved the way for the use of infinite series for computing areas. Newton and Liebnitz would both go on to refining these ideas and expose the relationship between differentiation and integration. The dispute between Liebnitz and Newton on ownership of this discovery is well-documented, with Liebnitz's notation for the formalisation of the theory of calculus enduring to the present. The optimality principal, obtained as an application of differentiation, can be attributed to Fermat (1601-1665) in a letter communicated before Newton's birth and is referred to as Fermat's theorem on stationary points.
In general, Newton's capacity to "transform the world" , was based on his opportunity and capacity to build on the ideas of other natural scientists, including members of the Royal Society which emerged in the decade of his birth, the revolutionary ideas of Galileo and the empirical work of Kepler and others. Just as importantly was his influence or religious thought, where he advanced the view of [Christian] God being rational and whose world could be better understood with mathematical analysis to uncover the rational laws governing it.
There are numerous references highlighting Newton's contribution to the advancement of scientific thinking and the development of humankind. Deeper insight into his pioneering work can be attained by appreciating the time in which he lived and the giant shoulders on which he stood.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY ISAAC NEWTON!!!
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some references:
https://www.newton.ac.uk/about/isaac-newton/lifehttp://www.biography.com/people/isaac-newton-9422656
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton
http://www.math10.com/en/maths-history/history5/origins-differential-integral.html
http://www.math10.com/en/maths-history/history5/origins-differential-integral2.html
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/A_History_of_Mathematics/Modern_Europe/Vieta_to_Descarteshttp://galileoandeinstein.physics.virginia.edu/lectures/newton.html
http://galileoandeinstein.physics.virginia.edu/lectures/newtongl.html
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