Biography | Isaac Newton — Book I of the Principia Laid Before the Royal Society

On 28 April 1686 Dr. Vincent presented a manuscript to the Royal Society at Gresham College. The title was Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, dedicated to the Society by Mr. Isaac Newton. The minutes record a mathematical demonstration of the Copernican hypothesis, with the celestial motions derived from a gravitation toward the Sun that falls as the square of the distance. The Society was meeting in rooms borrowed from Gresham College, Sir Thomas Gresham's old mansion between Bishopsgate and Broad Street. The house is gone. Tower 42 stands on the site. On 19 May the council ordered the book printed in quarto. Edmond Halley, the clerk, was told to see it through the press. The Society was short of money after sinking funds in Willughby's History of Fishes. Halley took on the cost himself. Hooke claimed the inverse-square idea. Newton struck most of the remaining acknowledgements of Hooke from the text. The printed Principia appeared in 1687. Halley sent a copy to King James II. What you can hold today is the argument. The room where the manuscript first landed on a table no longer exists. Photo: title page of the Principia, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons