SIR ISAAC NEWTON.

From the original Picture by Vanderbank
in the possession of the Royal Society

1927

ADVANCES IN THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES

FROM THE EDITORS.

On the twentieth of March, old style, 1727, Isaac Newton died. This issue of Advances in the Physical Sciences is dedicated to his memory.

Great and numerous are Newton’s merits in the various fields of the exact sciences. But among all his discoveries, the most important proceed in two directions: for one of them the symbol may be the Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy; the other found its fullest and most vivid expression in the Opticks. The fate that befell both of these directions of Newton’s creative work, however, proved to be different.

The spirit of the Principles of Natural Philosophy permeated the history of physics throughout the two centuries that have elapsed since the day of Newton’s death. Upon the ideas, conceptions, and methods of this book modern theoretical physics has grown up. The Principles were never consigned to oblivion. Different was the fate of Newton’s optical views. The victory of the wave theory compelled people to forget not only the corpuscular hypothesis, but along with it much else in Newton’s Opticks.

In our day, when the question of the nature of light has once again acquired an acuteness no less than that which it had in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it is instructive to recall Newton’s optical views. Before our eyes the wave theory has proved powerless to give a satisfactory explanation of a whole series of experimental facts, and corpuscles are reviving in a new form, while in the very last days theories have appeared that propose a synthesis of waves with corpuscles. The Opticks ...

Newton ceases to seem as archaic as he appeared quite recently; he once again acquires a living and active interest.

Having limited space at its disposal, the editorial board deemed it proper to devote the greater part of the present issue specifically to Newton’s optical works and to their connection with the problems of modern physics. Alongside articles devoted to these questions, we print here two original memoirs by Newton, illuminating his theoretical views and his principal experimental discoveries in the field of optics.