BOOK REVIEWS

teenth century - a learned culture that than 80 per cent were in Greek or Latin, In 's became virtually obsolete in Barrow's life­ and the remainder in English, French, time, when a more narrow scholarly pro­ Italian, Hebrew and Arabic. The books shadow fessionalism started to creep in. Past were almost evenly distributed among historians of science, too, have largely Barrow's three main interests: theology, Willem Hackmann ignored Barrow in their quest for the science (about half of these were mathe­ 'giants' of the , and matical and the remainder were devoted to Before Newton. The Life and Times of his name is linked to no discovery. Thus, medicine and philosophy) and the human­ . Edited by Mordechai Barrow became chiefly remembered as ities. Newton had free access to Barrow's Feingold. University Press: the mentor of Newton, but even this re­ library and this is the reason why he was 1990. Pp. 380. £35, $49.50. lationship has never been clarified. That not compelled, as Feingold suggests, to Newton was Barrow's pupil at Trinity is acquire a large number of books before When one thinks of Isaac Barrow one a myth. Hls name does not appear i11 · Barrow's death in 1677. The largest single immediately thinks of , and category of books purchased by Newton that has been the misfortune of one of before 1677 was alchemy, a subject con­ the most prominent seventeenth-century --~ sricuously absent from Barrow's library mathematicians and men of science. catalogue. History has not treated him kindly. Barrow's optical and mathematical Barrow's reputation was quickly put contributions have been very in the shade by the successor to his adequately dealt with in Alan Lucasian chair of at Shapiro's chapter, entitled The Cambridge, the incomparable Optical Lectures and the foun­ Newton, whom Barrow sup­ dations of the theory of optical ported successfully for the imagery', and in Michael post. His reward has been Mahony's 'Barrow's mathe­ that he has remained a rather matics: between ancients shadowy figure which this and moderns'. Shapiro biography, consisting of ' points out that Barrow a collection of chapters completed a major phase by Barrovian authorities, of the Keplerian revo­ attempts to illuminate. lution in geometrical According to an earlier by creating a biographer, Barrow was mathematical theory of known to his contempor­ optical imagery. The aries for his slovenly ways, weakness was that he did his excessively long ser­ not deal with applied mons, and his great learn­ optics and such topics as ing. He is best remembered the eye and vision, the for his mathematical and telescope and microscope. optical writings. History al­ Other biographers, notably ways has difficulty in judging a Whiteside, have been less polymath and that is what kindly about Barrow's optics, Barrow was in seventeenth­ but he does agree that his most century terms. Others have judged original contributions were his him an ambitious careerist. Certainly, method for finding the point of as this biography shows, ability did not refraction at a plane interface and get one far without patronage. Barrow his point construction of the dia- was lucky with his patrons both in and caustic of a spherical interface. In outside Cambridge. He was educated at mathematics Barrow and Newton were Charterhouse, Felstead School and Trinity pursuing quite different paths. Barrow College, Cambridge, where he was suc­ preferred the analysis of geometrical cessively a pensioner (1643), college fellow Newton's surviving papers, and there is configurations; Newton's (his (1649),andMaster (1673). His first attempt no evidence to suppose that Newton's form of ) clearly lay in the at the Regius professorship of Greek failed early mathematical or optical discoveries algebraic tradition. for politico-religious reasons ( Cambridge were due to Barrow. These aspects are Barrow emerges from these pages a was in the throes of the Civil War), but his discussed in both Feingold's introductory scholar in the humanist tradition (VIDE second attempt (1660) at the restoration of chapter and in John Gascoine's chapter, Anthony Grafton's brief chapter, 'Barrow the monarchy was successful. Subsequently entitled "Isaac Barrow's academic milieu: as a scholar'), a sincere man with a gentle he became Gresham professor of Interregnum and Restoration Cambridge'. temper (see Irene Simon's equally short in London (1662), thereby supplementing Both chapters also give a good insight chapter, 'The preacher') and, to give the his meagre Cambridge income, the first into mid-seventeenth-century university final word to the editor of this volume, a Lucasian professor of mathematics (1663), education at Cambridge. man whose integrity is the recurring motif Royal Chaplain to Charles II in London Insight into the relationship between of his life. D (1669), and finally Vice-Chancellor of Barrow and Newton is also somewhat Cambridge (1675). unexpectedly given in the final chapter in Willem Hackmann is in the Museum of the Barrow's misfortune was, as Feingold this volume in which Feingold describes History of Science, Broad Street, Oxford OX1 points out in his introductory chapter Barrow's library. As his first biographer, 3AZ, UK. 'Isaac Barrow: divine, scholar, mathe­ Abraham Hill, wrote, the estate left by matician', that he was active at the turning Barrow "was books". Of his library of 1,100 The picture shows Isaac Barrow in 1676 point of classical culture in the mid-seven- volumes, predictably for the period more (courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery).

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