THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF LONDON 



century. It is a troublous time in England. Revolu- 

 tion has followed revolution. Commonwealth has sup- 

 planted monarchy and monarchy commonwealth. At 

 last the "glorious revolution" of 1688 has placed a 

 secure monarch on the throne. But now one external 

 war follows another, and the new king, William of 

 Orange, is leading the "Grand Alliance" against the 

 French despot Louis XIV. There is war everywhere 

 in Europe, and the treaty of Ryswick, in 1697, is but 

 the preparation for the war of the Spanish Alliance, 

 which will usher in the new century. But amid all this 

 political turmoil the march of scientific discovery has 

 gone serenely on; or, if not serenely, then steadily, 

 and perhaps as serenely as could be hoped. Boyle 

 has discovered the law of the elasticity of gases and a 

 host of minor things. Robert Hooke is on the track 

 of many marvels. But all else pales before the fact 

 that Newton has just given to the world his marvellous 

 law of gravitation, which has been published, with 

 authority of the Royal Society, through the financial 

 aid of Halley. The brilliant but erratic Hooke has 

 contested the priority of discovery and strenuously 

 claimed a share in it. Halley eventually urges New- 

 ton to consider Hooke's claim in some of the details, 

 and Newton yields to the extent of admitting that the 

 great fact of gravitational force varying inversely as 

 the square of the distance had been independently dis- 

 covered by Hooke; but he includes also Halley him- 

 self and Sir Christopher Wren, along with Hooke, as 

 equally independent discoverers of the same principle. 

 To the twentieth-century consciousness it seems odd 

 to hear Wren thus named as a scientific discoverer ; but 



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