NEWTON, SIR CHARLES THOMAS (1816-1894), British archaeologist, was born on Sept. 16,1816, at Bredwardine in Herefordshire, and educated at Shrewsbury Schools and Christ Church, Oxford. He entered the British Museum in 1840 as an assistant in the Antiquities Department. In 1852 Newton left the Museum to become vice-consul at Mitylene, with the object of exploring the coasts and islands of Asia Minor. Aided by funds supplied by Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, then British ambassador at Constantinople, he made in 1852 and 1855 important discov eries of inscriptions at the island of Calymnos, off the coast of Caria; and in 1856-1857 achieved the great archaeological exploit of his life by the discovery of the remains of the mausoleum of Halicarnassus, one of the "seven wonders" of the ancient world. He was greatly assisted by Murdoch Smith, afterwards celebrated in connection with Persian telegraphs. The results were described by Newton in his History of Discoveries at Halicarnassus (1862 i863), written in conjunction with R. P. Pullan, and in his Travels and Discoveries in the Levant (1865). These works included par ticulars of other important discoveries, especially at Branchidae, where he disinterred the statues which had anciently lined the Sacred Way, and at Cnidos, where R. P. Pullan, acting under his direction, found the colossal lion now in the British Museum.
For 25 years, 186o-85, Newton was Keeper of Greek and Roman Antiquities in the British Museum. He was Yates pro fessor of classical archaeology at University college, London, (188o-88). His collected Essays on Art and Archaeology were published in 1886. He died at Margate on Nov. 28, NEWTON, SIR ISAAC 6 ( , 2-1727) , English natural phil osopher, was born at Woolsthorpe near Grantham on Dec. 25, 1642. His father had died the previous October and his mother, Hannah, daughter of J. Ayscough of Market Overton, married again in 1645 Barnabas Smith, Rector of North Welham, Lei cestershire.
Af ter his mother's second marriage her son had lived with his grandmother Mrs. Ayscough at Woolsthorpe, but on his step father's death his mother returned to her former home and her boy rejoined her.
For some two years he had attended the Grammar School at Grantham, then kept by Mr. Stokes. He is said to have made little progress with his books until a successful fight with another boy aroused a spirit of emulation and led to his becoming head of the school.
At the age of fourteen on his mother's return (1656) he was taken from school to assist her on her farm. This, however, was not a success; he occupied himself with mathematics when he ought to have been attending to his work. His uncle Wm. Ays cough, Rector of Burton Coggles, was a member of Trinity Col lege, Cambridge, and in 166o by his advice Newton was sent back to school to prepare for Cambridge. On June 5, 1661 he was matriculated as a subsizar at Trinity College. Three years later he was elected as scholar and ih Jan. 1665 proceeded in due course to the degree of Bachelor of Arts. In 1667 he was elected a Fellow of the College.
In the early part of 1665 he discovered what is now known as the binomial theorem, and a little later came the elements of the differential calculus which he called Fluxions. In May of the following year he writes "I had entrance into the inverse method of Fluxions" (in modern terms the principles of the Integral Calculus and the method for calculating the area of curves or the volume of solids) "and in the same year (1666) I began to think of gravity extending to the orb of the Moon . . . having thereby compared the force requisite to keep the Moon in her orb with the force of gravity at the surface of the Earth and found them to answer pretty nearly. All this was in the two years 1665 and 1666 for in those years I was in the prime of my age." The same period saw the commencement of his work on Optics and Colour.
The account of Newton's colour experiments was sent to the Royal Society in 1672. He had been elected a Fellow on January I I of that year and soon got into correspondence with Oldenburg, the secretary. "I shall endeavour," he wrote, "to show my grati tude by communicating what my poor and solitary endeavours can effect towards the promoting of philosophical design." His New Theory about Light and Colours was read on Feb. 8th. The experiments he described showed conclusively, he claimed, that "Light consists of Rays differently refrangible"; that "Colours are not qualifications of Light derived from refractions of natural bodies as is generally believed but original and connate properties which in divers Rays are divers . . . to the same degree of re frangibility ever belongs the same colour and to the same colour ever belongs the same degree of refrangibility." During the period covered by this work he had become Lucasian Professor of Mathe matics. Barrow resigned in his favour in 1669, and Newton's first course of lectures dealt with Optics ; hence his renewed interest in the subject, and the experiments with the prism bought at Stourbridge Fair in 1666, culminating in the Royal Society paper of 1672. But the paper led to controversy. The Royal Society solemnly thanked the author "for his ingenious discourse" and he was to be informed "that the society think very much of it." Robert Hooke along with Ward, Bishop of Salisbury and Robert Boyle were desired to peruse the discourse and report. Hooke in his Micrographia (1664) had described an experiment which was fundamentally the same as Newton's with the prism, but he had made no use of it ; the theory of colours he attempted to deduce was valueless ; however, while admitting the truth of Newton's observations, he declined to accept any of the conclusions drawn from them. The paper, when published, at once attracted atten tion, and others abroad joined in the discussion, the most impor tant issue of which was Newton's assertion that the length of the band of colours produced at a given distance from the prisms, was the same for prisms of any substance provided their angles were such that the deviation for the mean ray of the band was the same in all.