Before Newton
The Life and Times of Isaac Barrow

A comprehensive re-evaluation of Isaac Barrow (1630–1677), one of the more prominent and intriguing of all seventeenth-century men of science.

Mordechai Feingold (Edited by)

9780521063852, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 5 June 2008

396 pages
23.4 x 15.6 x 2 cm, 0.554 kg

"Barrow emerges as an interesting person living in interesting times, and Feingold's book captures this in a scholarly manner." Tom McMullen, Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society

A comprehensive re-evaluation of Isaac Barrow (1630–1677), one of the more prominent and intriguing of all seventeenth-century men of science. Barrow is remembered today - if at all - only as Sir Isaac Newton's mentor and patron, but he in fact made important contributions to the disciplines of optics and geometry. Moreover, he was a prolific and influential preacher as well as a renowned classical scholar. By seeking to understand Barrow's mathematical work, primarily within the confines of the pre-Newtonian scientific framework, the book offers a substantial rethinking of his scientific acumen. In addition to providing a biographical study of Barrow, it explores the intimate connections among his scientific, philological and religious worldviews in an attempt to convey the complexity of the seventeenth-century culture that gave rise to Isaac Barrow, a breed of polymath that would become increasingly rare with the advent of modern science.

List of contributors
Editor's preface
1. Isaac Barrow: divine, scholar, mathematician Mordechai Feingold
2. The Optical Lectures and the foundations of the theory of optical imagery Alan E. Shapiro
3. Barrow's mathematics: between ancients and moderns Michael S. Mahoney
4. Isaac Barrow's academic milieu: Interregnum and Restoration Cambridge John Gascoigne
5. Barrow as a scholar Anthony Grafton
6. The preacher Irène Simon
7. Isaac Barrow's library Mordechai Feingold
Index.

Subject Areas: Biography: general [BG]