The Reid Lecture Series Presents WillIam Dunham

Professor - Mathematical Historian — distinguished author Your humble servant, Isaac Newton

Date: Thursday, March 1, 2018 Reception with light appetizers: 5:30 p.m. Presentation: 6 p.m.-7p.m. Where: USU Ballroom, Cal State San Marcos In the 20th century, Cambridge University Press published the complete letters of Isaac Newton. For this talk, I will share some of my favorite examples of Newton as a correspondent. From his earliest known letter (where he scolded a friend for being drunk), through exchanges with Leibniz, Locke, and others, and up to documents written when he ran the Mint in London, these writings give glimpses of Isaac Newton at his best … and his worst.

In the process I shall discuss Newton’s first great mathematical discovery: his generalized binomial theorem and its use in approximating square roots. And I will end with Newton’s most famous letter and tell how my search for the original led me, improbably, to a library in Philadelphia.

William Dunham received his Ph.D. (1974) from Ohio State University. Dunham has written four books on the history of mathematics: Journey Through Genius (1990), The Mathematical Universe (1994), Euler: The Master of Us All (1999), and The Calculus Gallery (2005). After his retirement as Koehler Professor of Mathematics at Muhlenberg College, Dunham has held visiting positions at Harvard, Princeton, Cornell, the University of Pennsylvania, and Bryn Mawr College. He is presently a Research Associate in Mathematics at Bryn Mawr.

Sponsored by Marion & K. Brooks Reid Coordinated by the Department of Mathematics, CSUSM Tickets: free via Eventbrite (details on series webpage) Information: Reid Lecture Series Webpage https://www.csusm.edu/math/the-reid-lecture-series.html ( 1) (1 + ) = 1 + + + 1! 2! 2 푛 푛� 푛 푛 − 푥 푥 ⋯