Monday, December 7, 2009

philosophical transactions



TierneyLab at the NYT has a post about a really nice online exhibit celebrating 350 years of the Royal Society.

The exhibit, Trailblazing, is presented as a timeline with links to some key scientific papers that were presented in The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. Mathematics plays a big role in many of the interesting primary sources presented in the exhibit.

Here are a few of the more overtly math-related papers in the exhibit:

Isaac Newton's letter on his theory on light and colours from 1672.

John Hadley's paper describing a new instrument for measuring angles from 1731.

Bayes's posthumus essay on chance and proability of 1763.

Davies Gilbert's paper on the mathematical theory of suspension bridges from 1826.