Milstein Room, University Library Cambridge
Tickets are limited: book here.
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30 November 2017 (16.30-18.00)
NEWTON AND THE LONGITUDE
Isaac Newton is often thought of as an isolated genius working on purely
abstract scientific problems. Yet he and his work were often closely linked
to practical and political worlds. Nowhere is this more clear than when we
look at Newton's role in the story of finding longitude at sea, revealed in
the Library's archive.
Speaker: Rebekah Higgitt
Dr Rebekah Higgitt is a Senior Lecturer in History of Science at the
University of Kent. She is author of Recreating Newton (2007) and co-author
of Finding Longitude (2014) and was one of the curators of the National
Maritime Museum's 2014 exhibition, Ships, Clocks & Stars: The Quest for
Longitude. She is currently the Principal Investigator on a research
project, Metropolitan Science: Places, Objects and Cultures of Practice and
Knowledge in London, 1600-1800, funded by the Leverhulme Trust and in
collaboration with the Science Museum.
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7 December 2017 (16.30-18.00)
WITH THIS INK NEW MADE I WROTE THIS: THE HISTORY OF ISAAC NEWTON'S PRIVATE
PAPERS
In 1727, Isaac Newton died without a will. In addition to a sizeable
fortune and a collection of dutifully catalogued household goods (including
chocolate pots, bedsteads and commemorative images of himself), he left
behind of mass of papers that proved much more difficult to describe. This
enormous mass of writing comprised some ten million words, most of which
had never been seen by anyone other than Newton. For this, there was a very
good reason. The great majority of his surviving writing is theological,
concerned with excavating what Newton saw as a true history of the Church.
Were the religious beliefs set down by Newton in these papers made public
in his lifetime, he would have been branded a heretic. In this talk, I tell
the nearly 300 hundred-year history of the papers he left behind.
Speaker: Sarah Dry
Sarah Dry is the author of The Newton Papers: The Strange and True Odyssey
of Isaac Newton's Private Manuscripts (OUP, 2014). She studied at Harvard,
Imperial College London and the University of Cambridge and held research
fellowships at the LSE and the Institute of Development Studies, University
of Sussex. She is currently writing a book about the history of water and
climate science, funded by a Public Scholar grant from the US National
Endowment for the Humanities. Since 2016, she has been a Trustee of the
Science Museum Group.
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14 December 2017 (16.30-18.00)
DRAWING-ROOM DRAMAS: ISAAC NEWTON ON THE MANTELPIECE
Resembling a secular scientific saint, Isaac Newton is widely celebrated as
a super-human genius disengaged from ordinary life. Regarding him from a
different perspective, this lecture discusses his involvement in
Enlightenment affairs and polite society, with a particular focus on
analysing roles played by women.
Speaker: Patricia Fara
Dr Patricia Fara is a Fellow of Clare College and President of the British
Society for the History of Science. A regular contributor to academic and
popular journals as well as In our Time and other radio/TV programmes, her
publications include the prize-winning Science: A Four Thousand Year
History (2009) and Newton: The Making of Genius (2002). Her latest book, A
Lab of One's Own: Science and Suffrage in World War One, will be published
in January 2018.
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