Newtons Erfahrung während der Pest
Während der Pest schickte Cambridge seine Studenten nach Hause, sie sollten dort weiter studieren.
Das bekam Newton gut. Das Jahr der Pest wurde später als sein annus mirabilis bezeichnet.
Zunächst entwickelte er die Grundlagen der klassischen Mechanik, dann die der Bewegungslehre und der mathematischen
Analysis.
Dann entwickelte er anhand von Versuchen mit einem Loch in seinem Fensterladen seine Theorien zur Optik. Und schließlich kam er im Garten auf den Grundgedanken der Gravitationstheorie.
In London starb von 1665 bis 1666 ein Viertel der Bevölkerung an der Pest.
Zwei Jahre drauf war der "bummelnde" Student Newton Professor.
Und dabei blieb es nicht.
"[...] Cambridge sent students home to continue their studies. For Newton, that meant Woolsthorpe Manor, the family estate about 60 miles northwest of Cambridge.
Without his professors to guide him, Newton apparently thrived. The year-plus he spent away was later referred to as his annus mirabilis, the “year of wonders.”
First, he continued to work on mathematical problems he had begun at Cambridge; the papers he wrote on this became early calculus.
Next, he acquired a few prisms and experimented with them in his bedroom, even going so far as to bore a hole in his shutters so only a small beam could come through. From this sprung his theories on optics.[...]
“ … Whilst he was musing in a garden it came into his thought that the same power of gravity (which made an apple fall from the tree to the ground) was not limited to a certain distance from the earth but must extend much farther than was usually thought. ‘Why not as high as the Moon?’ said he to himself..”
In London, a quarter of the population would die of plague from 1665 to 1666. It was one of the last major outbreaks in the 400 years that the Black Death ravaged Europe.
Newton returned to Cambridge in 1667, theories in hand. Within six months, he was made a fellow; two years later, a professor.
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