A brief history of time - Stephen Hawking [87]
A more serious dispute arose with the German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz. Both Leibniz and Newton had independently developed a branch of mathematics called calculus, which underlies most of modern physics. Although we now know that Newton discovered calculus years before Leibniz, he published his work much later. A major row ensued over who had been first, with scientists vigorously defending both contenders. It is remarkable, however, that most of the articles appearing in defense of Newton were originally written by his own hand - and only published in the name of friends! As the row grew, Leibniz made the mistake of appealing to the Royal Society to resolve the dispute. Newton, as president, appointed an “impartial” committee to investigate, coincidentally consisting entirely of Newton’s friends! But that was not all: Newton then wrote the committee’s report himself and had the Royal Society publish it, officially accusing Leibniz of plagiarism. Still unsatisfied, he then wrote an anonymous review of the report in the Royal Society’s own periodical. Following the death of Leibniz, Newton is reported to have declared that he had taken great satisfaction in “breaking Leibniz’s heart.”
During the period of these two disputes, Newton had already left Cambridge and academe. He had been active in anti-Catholic politics at Cambridge, and later in Parliament, and was rewarded eventually with the lucrative post of Warden of the Royal Mint. Here he used his talents for deviousness and vitriol in a more socially acceptable way, successfully conducting a major campaign against counterfeiting, even sending several men to their death on the gallows.
GLOSSARY
Absolute zero: The lowest possible temperature, at which substances contain no heat energy.
Acceleration: The rate at which the speed of an object is changing.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to observe it.
Antiparticle: Each type of matter particle has a corresponding antiparticle. When a particle collides with its antiparticle, they annihilate, leaving only energy.
Atom: The basic unit of ordinary matter, made up of a tiny nucleus (consisting of protons and neutrons) surrounded by orbiting electrons.
Big bang: The singularity at the beginning of the universe.
Big crunch: The singularity at the end of the universe.
Black hole: A region of space-time from which nothing, not even light, can escape, because gravity is so strong.
Casimir effect: The attractive pressure between two flat, parallel metal plates placed very near to each other in a vacuum. The pressure is due to a reduction in the usual number of virtual particles in the space between the plates.
Chandrasekhar limit: The maximum possible mass of a stable cold star, above which it must collapse into a black hole.
Conservation of energy: The law of science that states that energy (or its equiva-lent in mass) can neither be created nor destroyed.
Coordinates: Numbers that specify the position of a point in space and time.
Cosmological constant: A mathematical device used by Einstein to give space-time an inbuilt tendency to expand.
Cosmology: The study of the universe as a whole.
Dark matter: Matter in galaxies, clusters, and possibly between clusters, that can not be observed directly but can be detected by its gravitational effect. As much as 90 percent of the mass of the universe may be in the form of dark matter.
Duality: A correspondence between apparently different theories that lead to the same physical results.
Einstein-Rosen bridge: A thin tube of space-time linking two black holes. Also see Wormhole.
Electric charge: A property of a particle by which it may repel (or attract) other particles that have a charge of similar (or opposite) sign.
Electromagnetic force: The force that arises between particles with electric charge; the second strongest of the four fundamental forces.
Electron: A particle with negative electric charge that orbits the nucleus of an atom.
Electroweak unification