Isaac Newton was a first-class scientist — and a ruthless enemy who thrived on oneupmanship. His intellectual rivals in the late 17th century included Robert Hooke, a polymath known for publishing Micrographia, the first book to feature pictures of lifeforms under the microscope.
Hooke’s work on the mathematics of planetary motions displeased Newton, who privately believed himself the only mortal able to understand the heavenly workings of a divine Creator. In correspondence with figures at the Royal Society in London, then the world’s leading scientific club, Newton made sure to establish bragging rights. “So then in this Theory,” he writes in slanting script, “I am plainly before Mr Hook [sic].”
His 1686 bid for glory is among the historical treasures being made accessible online from this week by the Royal Society. For the past five years, its archivists have gathered more than 400 years’ worth of scientific publishing in the form of data, graphs, notes and letters into a portal called Science in the Making, which aims to show how knowledge evolves.