Blackwell Science, LtdOxford, UKBJUBJU International1464-410XBJU InternationalJanuary 2005 951 Original Article ISAAC NEWTON OSTAD and WISE Celestial bodies and urinary stones: Isaac Newton (1641–1727) – health and urological problems EDWARD OSTAD and GILBERT J. WISE The Division of Urology, Maimonides Medical Center, Brooklyn, New York, USA Accepted for publication 12 October 2004 INTRODUCTION became a ‘subsisar’, which provided work and discusses the path of planets in relation to pay for his expenses. He had enough mathematical concepts. Newton began work Isaac Newton was a remarkable physicist and resources for his immediate needs, i.e. a on his Principia, a treatise of mathematics, mathematician of the 17th century. He chamber pot, candles for long nights and and from 1686 through to 1687 he wrote and overcame significant urological ailments, notebooks with blank pages [2]. presented to the Royal Society three volumes including possible nephrotic syndrome, of the Principia. urinary calculi and BOO while establishing his By 28 April 1664 Newton was elected a scientific genius. We assessed publications scholar and he began making mathematical In 1689 Newton sat for a portrait by Sir about Newton, and review his work and entries. In 1665, Newton received his Godfrey Kneller (1646/1649?-1723), the medical problems Bachelor’s degree but had to leave Cambridge leading portraitist in England during the late because of the plague epidemic. It is during 17th and early 18th centuries [3]. Isaac these years that Newton began questioning Newton and the noted philosopher John CHRONOLOGY OF NEWTON’S LIFE and exploring issues of motion. Locke (1632–1704) engaged in a prolific correspondence dealing with ‘corruptions of Isaac Newton was born on Christmas day From 1666 to 1667 Newton remained at the scriptures’. 1642 in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England. Cambridge, where on 2 October he became a His father died before his birth, hence he was minor Fellow of Trinity College. His work In 1696 Newton was appointed Warden of the known as a ‘posthumous’ baby. Isaac Newton entitled Enumeratio curvarum deals with the Mint and moved to Jermyn Street House in was presumably premature, as he was small earth’s curvature. He continued work in London. The next year Newton provided a enough to fit into a ‘quart pot’ [1]. Four years mathematics and astronomy. By 23 solution to the ‘Lion’s Paw’ problem presented later, his mother married a 63-year-old man February 1669, Newton described his first by Bernoulli, and his solution was read named Barnabas Smith, a wealthy rector from telescope in a letter to Henry Oldenburg, first anonymously to the Royal Society. By the end nearby North Witham. For 7 years young Isaac Secretary of the Royal Society. On October 29 of the 17th century Newton had numerous was entrusted to the care of his grandmother. of that year, Newton became the Lucasian achievements; he was elected as a Foreign He was small for his age, lonely and Professor of Mathematics. Associate of the Academie des Science (Paris) abandoned. He attended the local school, and became a council member of the Royal where he studied the Bible and arithmetic In the 1670s Newton became a Fellow of The Society, and on 26 November 1701 he was tables. At an early age he became aware of Royal Society, based on his work in developing elected as a Member of Parliament from changing shadows in relation to the sun’s the reflecting telescope. In 1675 he attended Cambridge. positions and time. Later, in Woolsthorpe, he his first meeting of the Royal Society, where constructed sundials that became a source of he met Robert Boyle (1627–1691), a British Newton’s interest in astronomy was time-keeping [2]. natural philosopher and theological writer, heightened by his visit in 1704 to John a pre-eminent figure of 17th century Flamsteed, the Astronomer Royal, at Following his step-father’s death in 1653, his intellectual culture, whose scientific work Greenwich (1646–1719). It is during this mother returned to Woolsthorpe, but Newton covered many areas including hydrostatics, period that Newton published his first edition did not return to her domicile until he was physics, medicine, earth sciences, natural of Opticks. On 16 April 1705 Newton was 17 years old. During that interval, he studied history and alchemy [3]. knighted by Queen Anne (1665–1714), who in Grantham, a town 8 miles (11 km) distant, reigned from 1702 to 1714. and boarded with an apothecary. He Newton presented his hypotheses on light subsequently returned to Woolsthorpe and before the Royal Society. In 1679, Newton’s He was very productive from 1707 to 1711, studied at the King’s School, the headmaster mother died and he spent much of the year in publishing Arithmetica universalis, another of which, Mr John Stokes, provided courses in Woolsthorpe. During the 1680s he observed edition of the Principia, De natura acidorum, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, theology and practical Halley’s Comet, and in August 1684 he met Enumeratio, De quadratura Lexicon technicum arithmetic that included algorithms for with Edmond Halley (1656–1742), an English and Analysis per quantititatum. surveying and measuring fields. astronomer and mathematician who was the first to calculate the orbit of the comet later Newton maintained his correspondence with On 5 June 5 1661 Newton matriculated at named after him. He is also noted for his role other eminent scientists of his era. In 1715 he Trinity College Cambridge. His financial in the publication of Newton’s Philosophiae began correspondence with Gottfried Leibniz resources were limited and he therefore Naturalis Principia Mathematica which (1646–1716), a German philosopher and 24 © 2005 BJU INTERNATIONAL | 95, 24–26 | doi:10.1111/j.1464-410X.2005.05242.x ISAAC NEWTON mathematician, which was curtailed because foundation of physical optics since his time quantifying the concept of force, the second Leibniz died in 1716. During 1717–1722, [3]. law completed the exact quantitative Newton had numerous publications, including mechanics that has been the paradigm of his Second Edition of Opticks (1719), first ASTRONOMY natural science ever since. English edition of Universal Arithmetic (1720), the third English edition of Opticks, Newton originally applied the idea of The quantitative mechanics of the Principia is and second edition of Commercium attraction and repulsion solely to the range of not to be confused with the mechanical epistolicum. terrestrial phenomena. In 1679, not long after philosophy. The latter was a philosophy of he had embraced the concept, another nature that attempted to explain natural It was during 1722 (aged 81 years) that application was suggested in a letter from phenomena by means of imagined Newton experienced urinary stone problems, Robert Hooke (1635–1703), who suggested mechanisms among invisible particles of discussed in greater detail later. A third that the force of gravity could be measured by matter. The mechanics of the Principia was an edition of Principia was published in 1726, using the motion of a pendulum (1666), and exact quantitative description of the motions but his heath began to fail and Newton died attempted to show that the Earth and Moon of visible bodies. It rested on Newton’s three on 20 March 1727, in Kensington, London. follow an elliptical path around the Sun. In laws of motion: (i) that a body remains in its 1672 Hooke discovered the phenomenon of state of rest unless it is compelled to change diffraction (the bending of light rays around by a force impressed on it; (ii) that the change NEWTON’S ACHIEVEMENTS corners); to explain it, he offered the wave of motion (the change of velocity times the theory of light. He stated the inverse square mass of the body) is proportional to the force PHYSICS – ANALYSIS OF LIGHT law to describe planetary motions in 1678, a impressed; and (iii) that to every action there law that Newton later used in modified form. is an equal and opposite reaction. The analysis The core of Newton’s contribution was Hooke complained that he was not given of circular motion in terms of these laws concerned with the physics of colour; an sufficient credit for the law and became yielded a formula of the quantitative measure, ancient theory extending back at least to involved in bitter controversy with Newton in terms of a body’s velocity and mass, of the Aristotle held that a certain class of ‘colour’ [3]. centripetal force necessary to divert a body phenomena, e.g. the rainbow, arose from the from its rectilinear path into a given circle. modification of light, which appears white in Newton demonstrated the rotation of the When Newton substituted this formula into its pristine form. Descartes had generalized Earth with an experiment where a body was Kepler’s third law, he found that the this theory for all colours and translated it dropped from a tower; as the tangential centripetal force holding the planets in their into mechanical imagery. Through a series of velocity at the top of the tower is greater than given orbits about the Sun must decrease experiments in 1665 and 1666, in which the that at the foot he predicted the body should with the square of the planets’ distances from spectrum of a narrow beam was projected fall slightly to the east. He sketched the path the Sun. Because the satellites of Jupiter also onto the wall of a darkened chamber, Newton of fall as part of a spiral ending at the centre obey Kepler’s third law, an inverse-square denied the concept of modification and of the earth. Nearly 5 years later, in August of centripetal force must also attract them to replaced it with that of analysis. Basically, he 1684, Newton was visited by the British the centre of their orbits.