Newton Innovator

that the Attraction always is in a duplicate proportion to the Distance from the Center Reciprocall. After his 1679 correspondence with Hooke, Newton, by his own account, found a proof that Keplers areal law was a consequence of centripetal forces, and he also showed that if the orbital curve is an ellipse under the action of central forces then the radial dependence of the force is inverse square with the distance from the centre. asked Newton what orbit a body followed under an inverse square force, and Newton replied immediately that it would be an ellipse. However in De Motu. he only gave a proof of the converse theorem that if the orbit is an ellipse the force is inverse square. The proof that inverse square forces imply conic section orbits is sketched in Cor. 1 to Prop. 13 in Book 1 of the second and third editons of the Principia, but not in the first edition. [M Nauenberg] Halley persuaded Newton to write a full treatment of his new physics and its application to astronomy. Over a year later (1687) Newton published the Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica or Principia as it is always known. The Principia is recognised as the greatest scientific book ever written. Newton analysed the motion of bodies in resisting and non resisting media under the action of centripetal forces. The results were applied to orbiting bodies, projectiles, pendulums, and free-fall near the Earth. He further demonstrated that the planets were attracted toward the Sun by a force varying as the inverse square of the distance and generalised that all heavenly bodies mutually attract one another. all matter attracts all other matter with a force proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. Newton explained a wide range of previously unrelated phenomena: - the eccentric orbits of comets; the tides and their variations; the precession of the Earths axis; and motion of the Moon as perturbed by the gravity of the Sun. After suffering a nervous breakdown in 1693, Newton retired from research to take up a government position in London becoming Warden of the Royal Mint (1696) and Master (1699). In 1703 he was elected president of the Royal Society and was re-elected each year until his death. He was knighted in 1708 by Queen Anne, the first scientist to be so honoured for his work. Petrisor Cristina ...