Timeline
1688 to 1734: publication, textbooks, and the war
| Date | Event | Who | Where | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1688 | David Gregory's reconstruction of Newton's prime theorem on series quadratures is printed in Archibald Pitcairne's Solutio problematis de historicis seu inventoribus, Edinburgh; Newton answers by starting the treatise that becomes De quadratura | David Gregory, Archibald Pitcairne, Isaac Newton | Edinburgh | Source 204, Guicciardini |
| 9 October 1690 | Huygens submits his catenary solution to Leibniz as an encrypted anagram, to claim priority without disclosing the answer | Christiaan Huygens | The Hague | Source 334, British Society for the History of Mathematics |
| May 1690 | Jacob Bernoulli prints 'Ergo et horum Integralia aequantur' in Acta Eruditorum p. 218 - the first appearance in print of 'integral' in its modern mathematical sense - and in the same issue sets the funicularia (hanging-chain) challenge | Jacob Bernoulli | Leipzig / Basel | Source 324, Miller; Source 334, British Society for the History of Mathematics |
| 1691 | Rolle states his theorem, about polynomials, in a book on solving equations - nine years before he begins campaigning against the calculus | Michel Rolle | Paris | Source 459, OConnor and Robertson; Source 453, Miller and Aldrich |
| June 1691 | Acta Eruditorum prints the catenary solutions of Leibniz, Huygens and Johann Bernoulli together; the hanging chain is a catenary, not the parabola Galileo supposed | Johann Bernoulli, Christiaan Huygens | Leipzig | Source 334, British Society for the History of Mathematics |
| late 1691 | Newton introduces the dotted-letter (fluxion) notation | Isaac Newton | Cambridge/London | Source 192, Whiteside |
| 1691 | Edmond Halley and Joseph Raphson examine the original De methodis manuscript at Cambridge and find it 'very much worn by having been lent out' | Edmond Halley, Joseph Raphson, Isaac Newton | Cambridge | Source 204, Guicciardini |
| 1691-1693 | Newton composes Tractatus de quadratura curvarum | Isaac Newton | Cambridge | Source 187, Newton |
| 1693 | Newtons fluxional dots reach print for the first time, in the Latin edition of Wallis Algebra | Isaac Newton, John Wallis | Oxford | Source 451, Cajori |
| 1693 | Extracts from De quadratura are printed in Wallis's Opera mathematica, vol. 2 | Isaac Newton, John Wallis | Oxford | Source 204, Guicciardini |
| 17 March 1694 | L'Hopital writes letter no. 20 to Johann Bernoulli offering a retainer of 300 pounds a year, backdated to 1 January, in exchange for Bernoulli's discoveries and his silence about them | Guillaume de l'Hopital, Johann Bernoulli | Paris / Basel | Source 315, Truesdell |
| 1694 | David Gregory visits Cambridge and transcribes Newton mathematical manuscripts; his summary treatise Methodus fluxionum then circulates in copies held by Jones and Keill | David Gregory, Isaac Newton, William Jones, John Keill | Cambridge | Source 204, Guicciardini |
| 30 September 1695 | Leibniz replies to l'Hopital's question about a derivative of order one-half; the conventional birthday of fractional calculus Disputed: The letter was NOT obtained in full text. The verified attestation of Leibniz writing a half-order differential is his letter to Wallis of 1697. | Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz | Hanover | Source 242, Leibniz; Source 241, Leibniz (ed. Gerhardt) |
| 7 September 1695 (OS) = 17 September 1695 (NS) | Halley writes to Newton that he still has De quadratura for transcription and that nobody has seen it or will without Newton's directions | Edmond Halley, Isaac Newton | London | Source 204, Guicciardini |
| 1696 | Newton appointed Warden of the Royal Mint | Isaac Newton | London | Source 194, Snobelen |
| 1696 | L'Hopital publishes Analyse des infiniment petits anonymously in Paris: the first calculus textbook. Section IX Prop. I (art. 163) contains what is now called L'Hopital's rule, discovered by Johann Bernoulli | Guillaume de l'Hopital, Johann Bernoulli | Paris | Source 316, L'Hospital; Source 315, Truesdell |
| June 1696 | Johann Bernoulli poses the brachistochrone problem in Acta Eruditorum, allowing six months; Leibniz asks for an extension | Johann Bernoulli | Groningen / Leipzig | Source 330, O'Connor; Source 321, Brewster |
| 1697 | In a letter to John Wallis, Leibniz writes d^(1/2)y and the general d^e y, and proposes "analysis infinitesimalis" as the common name for his method and Newton's | Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz | Hanover | Source 241, Leibniz (ed. Gerhardt) |
| January 1697 | Newton's solution of the brachistochrone appears anonymously in Philosophical Transactions, sent via Charles Montagu; the curve is the cycloid | Charles Montagu | London | Source 330, O'Connor; Source 321, Brewster |
| June 1697 | Johann Bernoulli, writing in Basnage's Histoire des ouvrages des scavans, says he recognizes Newton behind the anonymous solution 'comme ex ungue Leonem' Disputed: The 1697 original could NOT be retrieved. The familiar Latin form 'tanquam ex ungue leonem' is verified only as far back as Brewster 1831 p. 194 | Johann Bernoulli | Rotterdam | Source 337, Bernoulli; Source 321, Brewster |
| late 1690s | The manuscript of Enumeratio linearum tertii ordinis is shown to David Gregory; it is printed in 1704 with the Opticks Disputed: Guicciardini hedges: 'in the late 1690s', with no year | Isaac Newton, David Gregory | Cambridge | Source 204, Guicciardini |
| 1699 | Fatio de Duillier, in Lineae brevissimi descensus investigatio geometrica duplex, publicly claims Newton as first inventor and casts Leibniz as at best a second | Nicolas Fatio de Duillier | London | Source 284, Kollerstrom |
| 22 March 1698/9 (OS) = 1 April 1699 (NS) | William Chaloner executed at Tyburn Disputed: Date obtained only from tertiary sources; NOT verified against the Old Bailey Proceedings or a Newgate calendar. See CN-13. | William Chaloner | Tyburn, London | Source 196, Chaloner |
| early March 1698/9 (OS) = mid-March 1699 (NS) | William Chaloner writes to Newton from prison: 'O no body can save me but you' | William Chaloner, Isaac Newton | Newgate, London | Source 196, Chaloner |
| December 1701 - 1702 | Newton MP for Cambridge University (second term) | Isaac Newton | Westminster | Source 201, History of Parliament Trust |
| 1702 | Newton's 'classical scholia', after restricted manuscript circulation, are printed in David Gregory's Astronomiae physicae et geometricae elementa | Isaac Newton, David Gregory | Oxford | Source 204, Guicciardini |
| 1703 (volume published 1705) | Explication de l'arithmetique binaire, Histoire de l'Academie Royale des Sciences, Annee 1703, Memoires pp. 85-89 (Histoire section pp. 58-63), connecting binary to the hexagrams of Fuxi Disputed: Full text not obtained; the pagination comes from dealer bibliographies (tier 4) and has never been checked against the Gallica scan. | Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz | Paris | Source 236, Look |
| 1704 | Tractatus de quadratura curvarum published as an appendix to Opticks | Isaac Newton | London | Source 187, Newton |
| 1704 | Charles Hayes publishes A Treatise of Fluxions, the first book in English on the calculus, founded openly on actual infinitesimals | Charles Hayes | London | Source 439, Hayes |
| 1704 | In the printed De quadratura Newton replaces 'infinite parva' with 'admodum parva', editing the infinitesimals out of his own early text | Isaac Newton | London | Source 204, Guicciardini |
| 16 August 1705 | Jacob Bernoulli dies at Basel, aged 50 years 7 months; his tomb is later carved with an Archimedean spiral instead of the logarithmic spiral he asked for, under the motto Eadem mutata resurgo | Jacob Bernoulli | Basel | Source 328, O'Connor; Source 329, Ashworth |
| January 1705 | Anonymous review in Acta Eruditorum of Newton's De quadratura says Newton "substituted fluxions for differences", read in London as a plagiarism charge against Newton, and the proximate trigger of the whole dispute | Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz | Leipzig | Source 280, [Newton] |
| 1706 | William Jones uses the symbol pi for the ratio of circumference to diameter in Synopsis palmariorum mathesios | William Jones | London | Source 325, Miller |
| 1706 | William Jones prints pi in its modern meaning, on p. 263 of a beginners textbook, without comment | William Jones | London | Source 451, Cajori; Source 462, OConnor and Robertson |
| 1707 | Arithmetica universalis published anonymously at Cambridge; Newton let it go to press to secure his colleagues' support in the 1705 parliamentary election and had not seen a sheet of it | Isaac Newton, David Gregory | Cambridge | Source 204, Guicciardini |
| September-October 1708 | John Keill, in Philosophical Transactions 26(317), accuses Leibniz of publishing Newton's arithmetic of fluxions "mutatis nomine et notationis modo" | John Keill | London | Source 280, [Newton]; Source 283, Keill |
| 1710 | The 20-volume Taisei sankei is completed; none of it written by Seki, volumes 1-12 by Takebe Katahiro and 13-20 by Takebe Kataaki. It contains the enri, Japan's nearest equivalent of definite integration | Takebe Katahiro, Takebe Kataaki, Seki Takakazu | Edo, Japan | Source 430, OConnor and Robertson |
| c. 1710 | William Jones transcribes De methodis; Colson's 1736 English translation descends from this copy, not from Newton's original Disputed: Guicciardini hedges: the transcript was made by William Jones 'in about 1710' | William Jones, Isaac Newton, John Colson | London | Source 204, Guicciardini |
| 1711 | De analysi first printed, in William Jones's Analysis per quantitatum series, fluxiones, ac differentias | Isaac Newton, William Jones | London | Source 184, Newton |
| 29 December 1711 | Leibniz's second letter to Sloane: he declines to say how he came by the method, calls Keill a novice, and asks Newton to speak | Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Hans Sloane | Hanover / London | Source 280, [Newton] |
| 4 March 1711 (New Style) | Leibniz complains to Hans Sloane and asks the Royal Society to make Keill publicly retract | Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Hans Sloane | Hanover / London | Source 280, [Newton] |
| 1711 | In the printed De analysi William Jones changes 'esse infinite parvam' to 'in infinitum diminui & evanescere', most probably on Newton's instruction Disputed: Guicciardini hedges the attribution, not the year: Jones made the change 'most probably after Newton's instruction'. The instruction itself is not documented | William Jones, Isaac Newton | London | Source 204, Guicciardini |
| 1712 (committee appointed March, reported April; book dated 1712, circulated January 1713) | The Royal Society appoints a committee to examine the old letters and papers; its report and the documents are published as the Commercium Epistolicum. Leibniz is never asked for his account. Disputed: Committee membership and the exact appointment/report dates were NOT verified from the Royal Society Journal Book. Conventional list: Arbuthnot, Hill, Halley, Jones, Machin, Burnet, Robartes, Bonet, de Moivre, Aston, Brook Taylor; appointed 6 March 1711/12, reported 24 April 1712. | Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz | London | Source 280, [Newton]; Source 282, Newton; Source 284, Kollerstrom |
| 26 July 1712 | Brook Taylor communicates his theorem to John Machin by letter, three years before publishing it | Brook Taylor | England | Source 312, Gibson |
| 1713 | Charta volans ("flying sheet"), an anonymous single-sheet rebuttal circulated on the Continent for Leibniz, quoting an unnamed "eminent mathematician" (Johann Bernoulli, also anonymous) Disputed: Not verified in full text. The date is usually given as 29 July 1713, quoting a Bernoulli letter of 7 June 1713, and nothing here rests on the sheet itself or on a scholarly edition of it. | Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz | Continental Europe | Source 284, Kollerstrom |
| 1715 | Taylor publishes Methodus Incrementorum Directa et Inversa; the theorem now named after him is Prop. VII Cor. 2, p. 23 | Brook Taylor | London | Source 312, Gibson |
| January-February 1714/15 (OS) = 1715 (NS) | Newton publishes, anonymously and in his own Society's journal, "An Account of the Book entituled Commercium Epistolicum" in Phil. Trans. 29 no. 342, pp. 173-224: a review of the report he had himself written | Isaac Newton | London | Source 189, [Newton]; Source 191, Whiteside; Source 280, [Newton]; Source 282, Newton |
| November 1715 | Leibniz opens the correspondence with Samuel Clarke, routed through Caroline, Princess of Wales; five papers each, ending with Clarke's fifth reply of 29 October 1716 | Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Samuel Clarke, Caroline of Ansbach | Hanover / London | Source 240, Leibniz & Clarke (ed. Bennett) |
| 14 November 1716 | Leibniz dies at Hanover. On the standard account his secretary was effectively the only mourner | Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz | Hanover | Source 235, O’Connor & Robertson; Source 236, Look |
| July 1716 | Johann Bernoulli publishes an anonymous attack on Taylor, accusing him of plagiarism over centers of oscillation; the exchange runs to 1719 | Johann Bernoulli, Brook Taylor | Basel / London | Source 331, O'Connor |
| 1717 | Clarke publishes the Leibniz-Clarke correspondence in his own translation, after Leibniz is dead and cannot reply | Samuel Clarke | London | Source 240, Leibniz & Clarke (ed. Bennett) |
| 1717 | James Stirling publishes in Lineae Tertii Ordinis (p. 32) the expansion now called Maclaurin's series, and uses it as we now use it | James Stirling | Oxford | Source 312, Gibson |
| 1717 | Stirling publishes, in Lineae Tertii Ordinis Neutonianae p. 32, the series that will be named after Maclaurin twenty-five years later | James Stirling | Oxford | Source 312, Gibson |
| 1718 | Guido Grandi names the curve versoria (Latin, the rope that turns a sail) and la versiera in Italian | Guido Grandi | Pisa | Source 327, O'Connor |
| December 1720 (OS) | James Wilson writes to Newton reporting incorrectly copied transcripts of the 1666 and 1671 treatises circulating in at least two private hands, and guesses the copyists took double copies to sell | James Wilson, Isaac Newton | London | Source 204, Guicciardini |
| c. 1720 | James Wilson makes a secondary transcript of De methodis from Jones's copy; the transcript is now lost Disputed: Guicciardini hedges: Wilson's secondary transcript was made 'in ca. 1720', and the transcript is lost, so it cannot be dated from the object | James Wilson, William Jones | London | Source 204, Guicciardini |
| 1722 | Takebe Katahiro publishes the Tetsujutsu Sankei, containing his series for arc length in terms of the sagitta and a convergence-acceleration method equivalent to Romberg's; chapter 9 gives pi to over 40 decimal places | Takebe Katahiro | Edo, Japan | Source 430, OConnor and Robertson |
| 1727-1728 | Euler introduces the symbol e for the base of natural logarithms in the manuscript Meditatio in experimenta explosione tormentorum nuper instituta, a paper on the firing of cannon; it reaches print in the Mechanica of 1736 | Leonhard Euler | St Petersburg | Source 325, Miller |
| 20 March 1726/7 (OS) = 31 March 1727 (NS) | Isaac Newton dies, Kensington, London | Isaac Newton | Kensington, London | Source 200, Westminster Abbey |
| 20 March 1727 (Julian) = 31 March 1727 (Gregorian) | Newton dies at Kensington in the early hours; his body lies in state in the Jerusalem Chamber at Westminster | - | London | Source 243, Westminster Abbey; Source 200, Westminster Abbey |
| 28 March 1727 (OS) = 8 April 1727 (NS) | Newton buried in Westminster Abbey, the pall borne by two dukes, three earls and the Lord Chancellor | Isaac Newton | Westminster Abbey, London | Source 200, Westminster Abbey; Source 243, Westminster Abbey |
| August 1730 | Newton's monument completed by Michael Rysbrack to a design by William Kent; unveiled the following year | Isaac Newton | Westminster Abbey, London | Source 200, Westminster Abbey |
| 'Anno 1732' (as printed on the title) | The year printed in the title of Johann Bernoulli's Hydraulica; the work is not mentioned to Euler until October 1738 and does not appear in print until 1742/1743 Disputed: Craik's reference gives Opera omnia (Bousquet) 1742; Tou and others give 1743 for the appearance. The chronology of the Euler correspondence is what makes the antedating claim serious | Johann Bernoulli | Basel | Source 333, Tou; Source 336, Craik; Source 341, Darrigol |