#edmondhalley

“Honoured Sr

I have at length brought your Book to an end, and hope it will please you.

the last errata came just in time to be inserted.

I will present from you the books you desire to the R. Society, Mr Boyle, Mr Pagit, Mr Flamsteed

and if there be any eke in town that you design to gratifie that way;

and I have sent you to bestow on your friends in the University 20 Copies,

which I entreat you to accept. (…)”

— Halley to Newton, July 5, 1687

Edmond Halley

Edmond Halley, was an English astronomer, geophysicist, mathematician, meteorologist, and physicist. He was the second Astronomer Royal in Britain, succeeding John Flamsteed in 1720.

From an observatory he constructed on Saint Helena, Halley recorded a transit of Mercury across the Sun. He realised a similar transit of Venus could be used to determine the size of the Solar System. He also used his observations to expand contemporary star maps. He aided in observationally proving Isaac Newton's laws of motion, and funded the publication of Newton's influential Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica. From his September 1682 observations, he used the laws of motion to compute the periodicity of Halley's Comet in his 1705 Synopsis of the Astronomy of Comets. It was named after him upon its predicted return in 1758, which he did not live to see.

17th century scholars out of context doodle, but can’t help drawing this shit after watching today’s EURO2024 match ENG vs SUI

Nicholas Fatio Edmond Halley

Two of Newton’s closest friends enjoying EM

Plus:

…The previous January, Halley, Robert Hooke, and the architect Sir Christopher Wren had talked on after a meeting of the Royal Society. Wren wondered if it was true that the motion of the planets obeyed an inverse square law of gravity — the same inverse square relationship that Newton had investigated during the plague years. Halley readily confessed that he could not solve the problem, but Hooke had boasted that he had already proved that the inverse square law held true, and “that upon that principle all the Laws of the celestiall motions were to be demonstrated.” When pressed, though, Hooke refused to reveal his results, and Wren openly doubted his claim. Wren knew how tricky the question was.

Today, #onthisday in 1687, Isaac Newton’s ‘Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica’ was published. To celebrate this, I did small translation projects of ‘De Motu Corporum in Gyrum’ from Latin to Korean.

—————————

In 1684 Dr Halley came to visit him at Cambridge, after they had been some time together, the Dr asked him what he thought the Curve would be that would be described by the Planets supposing the force of attraction towards the Sun to be reciprocal to the square of their distance from it. Sr Isaac replied immediately that it would be an Ellipsis, the Doctor struck with joy & amazement asked him how he knew it, why saith he I have calculated it, whereupon Dr Halley asked him for his calculation without any farther delay, Sr Isaac looked among his papers but could not find it, but he promised him to renew it, & then to send it him… (Joseph Halle Schaffner Collection, University of Chicago Library, MS 1075–7.)

——————————