Today’s entry in the list of Trivial Things shows that even history’s greatest minds weren’t immune to largely pointless feuds.
While Isaac Newton’s numerous discoveries and theories had a tremendous impact on various scientific fields, he was far from the only scientific mind at work, as all of Europe seemed to be busy with making scientific discoveries after Galileo and Kepler were able to prove that the Earth orbited the Sun. Newton himself worked with many colleagues, such as Edmond Halley and Christopher Wren, and in continental Europe lived many prominent scientists, including Christiaan Huygens, Johann and Jakob Bernoulli, Blaise Pascal, and (most importantly for this discussion) Gottfried Leibniz, who made many discoveries in the fields of astronomy and mathematics.
From 1665 to 1667, Newton worked on many of his greatest achievements in a situation which has now become familiar to most of you, in his home while Cambridge University closed due to infectious disease, in this case the plague. However, Newton was reluctant to publish his work as he did not want to deal with potential criticism.
In order to formulate the equations behind what is now Newton’s best-known achievement, his laws of gravity, Newton would devise a whole new form of mathematics. This is what would become known as calculus, but Newton referred to it as the “method of fluxions.” So why, then, is it referred to today as calculus? The answer is that Leibniz was much less reluctant to publish his findings, so when he discovered similar principles to Newton in the 1670s, he only waited until 1684 to publish his discoveries, which he termed ‘calculus.’ As Newton’s renown grew, he started to share his discoveries in calculus with his colleagues, but still didn’t publish a complete summary of what he had found. Initially, Leibniz and Newton greatly admired each other as mathematicians, although each sincerely believed they deserved credit for the discovery of the methods of calculus.
However, controversy would start brewing when in 1695,.English mathematician John Wallis seemed to accuse Leibniz of getting his ideas from Newton. This was quite in character for Wallis, who was fond of attacking non-English mathematicians and defending English mathematicians at any opportunity. Leibniz was justifiably offended by this and sought to prove the superiority of his methods.
In 1697, Newton anonymously solved a problem posed by Leibniz’s colleague Johann Bernoulli. However, it was obvious to Bernoulli and Leibniz who was responsible, and Leibniz stated that all those who solved the problem must’ve understood his calculus quite well. This offended one of Newton’s allies, who brought the controversy further into the public eye by directly accusing Leibniz of plagiarizing Newton. However, Newton and Leibniz still held each other in too high regard to publicly butt heads.
This changed somewhat, however, once Newton’s methods started being formally published in 1704 and Leibniz saw the intricacies of the method Newton had developed and saw that he had discovered most of the same principles that he had. Perhaps to dismiss the old accusations against Leibniz, an anonymous review implicitly accusing Newton of using Leibniz’s superior methods was published in Leibniz’s journal. While Newton likely did not see this review, English mathematician John Keill did and decided to defend Newton and attack Leibniz in 1708. This would bring the two greats of calculus directly against each other, as Leibniz wrote to Newton’s Royal Society to complain about Keill. In 1712, the Royal Society responded with a document compiling evidence that Leibniz got his ideas from Newton’s unpublished work, evidence which was mostly inaccurate. While Leibniz never publicly responded before his death in 1716 took him out of the controversy, the reverence English scientists had for Newton meant that it took them a very long time to acknowledge Leibniz’s role in calculus’s development.
Today, this controversy seems rather trifling for two of the greatest scientists of the time to get into. Indeed, it seems that Newton and Leibniz thought it was trifling as well, as they only really got involved once they felt that they had to. But once the dispute had started, both scientists were too prideful to let it stop, and one of the greatest stories in the history of mathematics followed suit.