Newton-Hooke priority controversy for the inverse square law
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In 1686,[lower-alpha 1] when the first book of Newton's Principia was presented to the Royal Society, Robert Hooke accused Newton of plagiarism by claiming that he had taken from him the "notion" of "the rule of the decrease of Gravity, being reciprocally as the squares of the distances from the Center". At the same time (according to Edmond Halley's contemporary report) Hooke agreed that "the Demonstration of the Curves generated thereby" was wholly Newton's.[1]
A modern assessment of the early history of the inverse square law is that "by the late 1670s", the assumption of an "inverse proportion between gravity and the square of distance was rather common and had been advanced by a number of different people for different reasons".[2] The same author credits Robert Hooke with a significant and seminal contribution, but treats Hooke's claim of priority on the inverse square point as irrelevant, as several individuals besides Newton and Hooke had suggested it. He points instead to the idea of "compounding the celestial motions" and the conversion of Newton's thinking away from "centrifugal" and towards "centripetal" force as Hooke's significant contributions.
Newton gave credit in his Principia to two people: Bullialdus (who wrote without proof that there was a force on the Earth towards the Sun), and Borelli (who wrote that all planets were attracted towards the Sun).[3][4] The main influence may have been Borelli, whose book Newton had a copy of.[5]