Did Sir Isaac Newton ever claim that his mind in 1666 was "remarkably fit for invention"?
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Accepted answer
I believe the authors are paraphrasing a fairly well-known extract from a draft of a letter from Newton to Pierre Des Maizeaux, written in 1718. The extract in full reads as follows:
In the beginning of the year 1665 1 found the method of approximating series and the rule for reducing any dignity [power] of any binomial into such a series. The same year in May I found the method of tangents of Gregory and Slusius, and in November had the direct method of fluxions and the next year [1666] in January had the theory of colours and in May following I had entrance into the inverse method of fluxions. And the same year I began to think of gravity extending to the orb of the moon ... All this was in the two plague years of 1665 and 1666, for in those days I was in the prime of my age for invention and minded Mathematics and Philosophy more than at any time since.
(my emphasis)
- [Quoted in A. Rupert Hall, Philosophers at War: The Quarrel Between Newton and Leibnitz, Cambridge University Press, 1980, p11]
The original draft of the letter is held in the collection of Cambridge University Library.
It has been digitised and is available to view under the reference MS Add.3968.29: 420-437 from their online collection.
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