On May 7, 4:38*pm, Michael Press wrote:
In article
,
*Frank Krygowski wrote:

On May 7, 12:01*am, Tom Lake wrote:

If you can't take the whole corpus of any author's work, then don't
cite that author. *I won't cite an author for whom I must apologize!

:-) *Well, so much for calculus, Newton's laws of motion, Newton's
work on gravitation, on optics, on fluid mechanics... need I go on?
The man was a big fan of alchemy, after all!

Lest anyone take away from this that Sir Isaac Newton
was not a practical man, he was made warden of the Royal Mint
where his chemical and mathematical knowledge enabled
him to rescue coinage from the brink of disaster,
and carry out the Great Recoinage of 1696. In recognition
of his achievement he was made Master of the Mint
at £1200 per annum.

I didn't know about that, but even without it, his contributions to
math and science were absolutely astonishing. I figure he was one of
the most intelligent people to ever walk the earth. A real SOB, quite
weird, but brilliant.

I recall reading about his development of a reflecting ceiling
sundial. He realized that a chip of mirror angled properly in a south-
facing window would put a point of light on the ceiling, and that the
light would be in any given spot only twice per year. He then
observed and plotted the curves on the ceiling so that by looking at
the point of light, he could read both the date and the time of day.
Not bad for a 12-year-old!

Hmm. Especially a 12-year-old in England, where you get to see the
sun only a few times per year! ;-)

- Frank Krygowski