"After great and fruitful efforts both in the purer geometry and the more intricate and complex physics, the most skilful geometer Sir Christopher Wren, who among other luminaries of the University of Oxford graced this professorship, solved the following problem: To find the law of gravity or centripetal force by which several bodies moved around a common centre of forces are driven, given that the squares of the periodic times are as the cubes of the radii, as was observed by Kepler for the planets moved around the sun. The most renowned Wren found that the required law of gravity was such that the centripetal forces were reciprocally as the squares of the distances from the centre of forces, and that no other law would agree with what was observed."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Fellows of the Royal SocietyMathematicians from EnglandAcademics from the United KingdomAstronomers from EnglandUniversity of Edinburgh alumni
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Imported from EN Wikiquote
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/David_Gregory_(mathematician)
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
David Gregory (mathematician)
David Gregory (originally spelt Gregorie) FRS (3 June 1659 – 10 October 1708) was a Scottish mathematician and astronomer. He was professor of mathematics at the , and later at the University of Oxford, and a proponent of Isaac Newton's '.
52 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by David Gregory (mathematician) →
Related Quotes
"[I]t is by the help of geometry that all the arts necessary for improving life,.. as geography,.. rules of navigation…"
"[W]ithin the memory of ourselves and... our fathers, philosophers began to extend the limits of geometry in order to …"
"It is... most gratifying to my soul that, after spending a large part of my life in other universities, I can be link…"
"[T]he easier, simpler and less composite these theories are, the more they will be consonant not only with what has a…"
"In the past many very base Remus’s leapt over the walls of the astronomical city, but now the geometers have so forti…"
"[W]hat sharpness of mind was employed by John Kepler... when, from there being just five regular solids... he inferre…"
"[G]lory has been reserved to our era and to the English people, who since the instauration of the sciences have made …"
"After Kepler’s bold and fruitful efforts to advance natural philosophy by the help of geometry, there should have app…"
"[W]e have come into the age where questions that were once cosmographical are being transformed into geometrical prob…"
"Although in every age there have been those who cultivated astronomy, either by... observations... or by theories and…"