Popa's Tales: The Wager

Vol 4, No 3 Presented by Smart Science ™ and Popa as a free service for entertainment and education
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THE WAGER

Edmund Halley

In 1683, Edmond Halley was dining in London with Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke. All three were astronomers who later gained fame in other fields. Hooke was the first to describe cells. Wren became a famous architect. Halley was at various times sea captain, cartographer, professor of geometry at Oxford, deputy controller of the Royal Mint, and astronomer royal That evening the discussion wandered to the movement of planets. They felt the orbits were elliptical but the question was why. Wren suggested a wager and offered 40 shillings to the man who could determine why. Hooke indicated he had already calculated the answer but would not reveal the answer as it would spoil the fun for others. (He never did reveal the answer if he in fact knew it.) The animosity between Hooke and Newton is one of the most famous in science and lasted even after Hooke's death.

Christopher Wren
Halley worked diligently on a solution. He finally went to speak to Isaac Newton, the most prominent mathematician in England. Newton indicated that it was in fact elliptical and had already calculated it. He could not locate the calculations. Newton promised to recalculate the problem and publish a paper. Pause for a moment and realize that a mathematical solution to the orbits of planets at that time was like a cure for cancer today. Only Isaac Newton could have lost such a set of calculations and few could have so readily promised to recalculate them. Two years later Newton expanded his studies on celestial motion and produced one of the greatest documents ever produced by the human mind, The Principia (Philosphiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, roughly translated as "Mathematical Principles of Science").

Robert Hooke
The Royal Society, having just lost money on a publication called The History of Fishes. gave Halley the responsibility of proofing the manuscript and getting it published. Halley paid for the publication with his own funds. Newton wrote the Principia in prose that is very difficult to comprehend so that he would not be bothered by what he referred to as mathematical “smatterers”. Newton became instantly famous and received many laudatory honors.

Isaac Newton
Newton was an eccentric with many varied interests. In 1936 Maynard Keyes purchased a trunk of Newton’s paper at an auction. Much to his surprise they were devoted almost entirely devoted to alchemy. Newton was also deeply involved with figuring out mathematically when the second coming of Christ would be. He taught himself ancient Hebrew and studied old texts and drawing for mathematical clues. He was not religiously devoted but undertook these studies as a scientist.

Halley is remembered today as the man who gave his name to a comet. Halley did not discover the comet. He only pointed out that the one he saw in 1682 was the same one that had been seen in 1452, 1531 and 1607. Also, the comet was not named for him until 16 years after his death.

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