The Mathematical Papers of Isaac Newton: Volume 8 by Isaac Ne... - 9780521045919

The Mathematical Papers of Isaac Newton: Volume 8Author(s): Isaac Newton, D. T. Whiteside\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom\nImprint: Cambridge University Press\nISBN-13: 9780521045919, 978-0521045919\nSynopsis\nWhen Newton left Cambridge in April 1696 to take up, at the age of 53, a new career at the London Mint, he did not entirely 'leave off Mathematicks' as he so often publicly declared. This last volume of his mathematical papers presents the extant record of the investigations which for one reason and another he pursued during the last quarter of his life. In January 1697 Newton was tempted to respond to two challenges issued by Johann Bernoulli to the international community of mathematicians, one the celebrated problem of identifying the brachistochrone; both he resolved within the space of an evening, producing an elegant construction of the cycloid which he identified to be the curve of fall in least time. In the autumn of 1703, the a.