Great Astronomers - Robert Stawell Ball (the little red hen ebook .TXT) 📗

to which we have

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