Record

RefNoMS/81/7
Previous numbersMS 81.4
LevelItem
TitleLetter, from John Collins to [James] Gregory [Gregorie]
Date25 November 1669
DescriptionCorrected copy of a letter in Collin's hand, dated in the margins and at the back of the text.
Finds time to write as troublesome Parliamentary work has eased. Gives news of the latest publications in London: [Isaac] Barrow's Optical Lectures, [John] Wallis' De Moty et Statica, [Robert] Anderson's Appendix to the Stereometrical Propositions, the response to Anderson's volume by [John] Newton entitled "Practical Gauging". Mentions latest news regarding foreign publications. [Samuel Fermat]'s publication of [Pierre de] Fermat's notes in the margins of his copy of Bachet's translation of Diophantus [Arithmetica] [Note: this includes Fermat's last theorem] will not be published for another three months [it would be published in 1670]. Notes Ale[ssandro] Marchetti Exercitationes Mechanicae and the costly publications of "Reinaldinus" which sell so little that the stationers are refusing to publishing anything by him anymore.
Forthcoming 12 Geometrical lectures by Barrow are described in details.
Barrow has "resigned his Lecturers place to one Mr [Isaac] Newton of Cambridge" who "before Mercators Logarithmotechnia was extant invented the same method and applied it generally to all curves and diverse wayes to the circle" and whom he cites in his preface of the Optics.

Last paragraph regarding Isaac Newton is underlined, at the back and top of the page annotated in two different hands N.14 p.95, referring to the printed edition of the Commercium, 2nd edition 1722 in which the letter is mentioned.
Letter also extracted in MS/36/1/17.
LanguageEnglish
Extent1p
FormatManuscript
PhysicalDescriptionInk on paper
AccessStatusOpen
RelatedMaterialPrinted in 'Commercium Epistolicum' 1722 edition, page 95, paragraph XIV
Fellows associated with this archive
CodePersonNameDates
NA2898Collins; John (1625 - 1683); mathematician and scientific administrator1625 - 1683
NA8395Gregorie; James (1638 - 1675); mathematician1638 - 1675
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