Personal Life ofIsaac Newton

• Nice Web site at http://wwwgap.dcs.stand.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Newton.html

Isaac Newton

(1642-1727) Robert Hooke

(1635-1703) No portrait survives. His name is somewhat obscure today, due in part to the enmityof his famous, influential, and extremely vindictive colleague, Sir Isaac Newton. Yet Hooke wasperhaps the single greatest experimental scientist of the

seventeenth century.

Edmond Halley (1656-1742)

Discovered the comet in 1680.

• Source: Adam Hart-Davis. Program for BBC television reviewed in London Telegraph, September 11, 2002

Newton, Hooke, and Halley• Wrote the Principia after a challenge by Hooke and Halley

• How did the comet play a role? Apparently Newton believed the planets all circles the sun in the same direction due to a cosmic “vortex”.• Halleys comet went the other direction! A clue that Newton was wrong. A start toward the Universal theory!