Letter from Newton to Henry Oldenburg, dated 21 May 1672

Author: Isaac Newton

Source: MS Add. 3976, ff. 14r-15v, Cambridge University Library, Cambridge, UK

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<14r>

May 21. 1672. Trin. Coll.

Sir

Tis now more then a fortnight since in answer to your last letter May 2^d, I returned you some considerations on M. Cassegrains designe for refining the Telescope And to your suggestion that when my answer to M^r Hooks & Father Pardies Objections should be printed, the names of the Objectors, especially if they desired, might be omitted; I told you that it was indifferent to me whether they were printed with or without the Authors names, I being concerned in the matter of those objections without respect to their persons. But yet I understood not your desire of leaving out M^r Hooks name, because the contents would discover their Author unlesse the greatest part of them should be omitted & the rest put into a new Method without having any respect, to the Hypothesis of colours described in his Micrographia. And then they would in effect become new objections & require another Answer then what I have written. And I know not whether I should dissatisfy them that expect my answer to these that are already sent to me.

But yet upon the receipt of your letter I deferred the sending those things which I intended, & have determined to send you alone a part of what I prepared, as I told you, to accompany my Answer; for the sake of which I have hitherto suspended it. The subject of this discourse is the Phænomena of Plated Bodies, concerning which I shall by experiments first show how according to their severall thicknesses they reflect or transmit the rays indued with severall colours, & then consider the relation which these thin transparent Plates have to the parts of other naturall Bodies, in order to a fuller understanding of the cases of their colours also. And this I purpose to send becuse it most properly apperteines to the former discourse of light, being a declaration of the different reflectibility of the severall sorts of rays, as that was of their different refrangibility. I onely expect your answer to my last & this, & then my next may conteine this Subject. In the meane time I rest

Your humble Servant

I. Newton

<15v>

These

To Henry Oldenburg Es at his house about the middle of the old Pall-Maile in Westminster

London.

Rec. May 22. 72.

Answ. May 23.

Wrote again june, and pressed His Answ. to Hook putting him in mind of {his} premiss and desiring to acknowledge tardies Candid return.