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Catherine Conduitt
Catherine Barton (1679–1739) was an English woman who oversaw the running of the household of her uncle, scientist Isaac Newton. She was reputed to be the source of the story of the apple inspiring Newton's work on gravity, and his papers came to her on his death. She was rumoured to have been the mistress of the poet and statesman Charles Montagu and later married politician John Conduitt. Early life Barton was the second daughter of Robert Barton (1630–1693) and his second wife, Hannah Smith (1652–1695), half-sister of Isaac Newton. She was baptized at Brigstock, Northampton on 25 November 1679. Barton's social circle Barton was remarked upon by several men to be beautiful, witty and clever. She was known as a brilliant conversationalist, and attracted the admiration of such famous figures as Jonathan Swift and Voltaire. Her uncle was also fond of her; an excerpt of an uncharacteristically warm letter from Newton survives, regarding her contraction of smallpox: "Pray ...
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John Conduitt
John Conduitt (; c. 8 March 1688 – 23 May 1737), of Cranbury Park, Hampshire, was a British landowner and Whig politician. He sat in the House of Commons from 1721 to 1737. He was married to the half-niece of Sir Isaac Newton, whom Conduitt succeeded as Master of the Mint. Early life The son of Leonard and Sarah Conduitt, John was baptised at St Paul's, Covent Garden, London, on 8 March 1688. In June 1701 he was admitted to St Peter's College, Westminster School, as a King's scholar. In 1705, while at Westminster, he was elected a Queen's scholar to Trinity College, Cambridge, with three others. He was admitted there in June of that year and matriculated to the University, but did not graduate, staying only two years. Career By 1707, based on his own account, he was "travelling" in Holland and Germany. In September 1710, he became judge advocate with the British forces in Portugal. He was a "very pretty gentleman" according to James Brydges. From October 1710, he acted ...
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John Flamsteed
John Flamsteed (19 August 1646 – 31 December 1719) was an English astronomer and the first Astronomer Royal. His main achievements were the preparation of a 3,000-star catalogue, ''Catalogus Britannicus'', and a star atlas called '' Atlas Coelestis'', both published posthumously. He also made the first recorded observations of Uranus, although he mistakenly catalogued it as a star, and he laid the foundation stone for the Royal Greenwich Observatory. Life Flamsteed was born in Denby, Derbyshire, England, the only son of Stephen Flamsteed and his first wife, Mary Spadman. He was educated at the free school of Derby and at Derby School, in St Peter's Churchyard, Derby, near where his father carried on a malting business. At that time, most masters of the school were Puritans. Flamsteed had a solid knowledge of Latin, essential for reading the scientific literature of the day, and a love of history, leaving the school in May 1662.Birks, John L. (1999) ''John Flamsteed, t ...
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Augustus De Morgan
Augustus De Morgan (27 June 1806 – 18 March 1871) was a British mathematician and logician. He is best known for De Morgan's laws, relating logical conjunction, disjunction, and negation, and for coining the term "mathematical induction", the underlying principles of which he formalized. De Morgan's contributions to logic are heavily used in many branches of mathematics, including set theory and probability theory, as well as other related fields such as computer science. Biography Childhood Augustus De Morgan was born in Madurai, in the Carnatic Sultanate, Carnatic region of India, in 1806. His father was Lieutenant-Colonel John De Morgan (1772–1816), who held various appointments in the service of the East India Company, and his mother, Elizabeth (née Dodson, 1776–1856), was the granddaughter of James Dodson (mathematician), James Dodson, who computed a table of anti-logarithms (inverse logarithms). Augustus De Morgan became blind in one eye within a few months of his bi ...
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Philip Kerr
Philip Ballantyne Kerr (22 February 1956 – 23 March 2018) was a British author, best known for his Bernie Gunther series of historical detective thrillers. Early life Kerr was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, where his father was an engineer and his mother worked as a secretary. He was educated at a grammar school in Northampton. He studied at the University of Birmingham from 1974 to 1980, gaining a master's degree in law and philosophy. Kerr worked as an advertising copywriter for Saatchi & Saatchi before becoming a full-time writer in 1989. In a 2012 interview, Kerr noted that he began his literary career at the age of twelve by writing pornographic stories and lending them to classmates for a fee. Career A writer of both adult fiction and non-fiction, he is known for the Bernhard "Bernie" Gunther series of 14 historical thrillers set in Germany and elsewhere during the 1930s, the Second World War and the Cold War. He also wrote children's books under the name P. B. Ke ...
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Baroque Cycle
''The Baroque Cycle'' is a series of novels by American writer Neal Stephenson. It was published in three volumes containing eight books in 2003 and 2004. The story follows the adventures of a sizable cast of characters living amidst some of the central events of the late 17th and early 18th centuries in Europe, Africa, Asia, and Central America. Despite featuring a literary treatment consistent with historical fiction, Stephenson has characterized the work as science fiction, because of the presence of some anomalous occurrences and the work's particular emphasis on themes relating to science and technology. The sciences of cryptology and numismatics feature heavily in the series, as they do in some of Stephenson's other works. Books The ''Baroque Cycle'' consists of several novels "lumped together into three volumes because it is more convenient from a publishing standpoint"; Stephenson felt calling the works a ''trilogy'' would be "bogus". Appearing in print in 2003 and 20 ...
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The System Of The World (novel)
''The System of the World'' is a novel by Neal Stephenson and the third and final volume in ''The Baroque Cycle''. The title alludes to the third volume of Isaac Newton's ''Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica'', which bears the same name. ''The System of the World'' won the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel and the Prometheus Award in 2005, as well as a receiving a nomination for the Arthur C. Clarke Award the same year. Plot Solomon's Gold Daniel Waterhouse returns to England from his "Technologickal College" project in Boston in order to try to resolve the feud between Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz over who invented calculus. Someone attempts to assassinate him with an "Infernal Device" (a time bomb), and Waterhouse forms a club to find out who did it and prosecute them. It later turns out that the bomb was intended for his friend Isaac Newton. Jack Shaftoe, under the alias Jack the Coiner, attempts a heist at the Tower of London. Currency Daniel ...
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Neal Stephenson
Neal Town Stephenson (born October 31, 1959) is an American writer known for his works of speculative fiction. His novels have been categorized as science fiction, historical fiction, cyberpunk, and baroque. Stephenson's work explores mathematics, cryptography, linguistics, philosophy, currency, and the history of science. He also writes nonfiction articles about technology in publications such as ''Wired (magazine), Wired''. He has written novels with his uncle, George Jewsbury ("J. Frederick George"), under the collective pseudonym Stephen Bury. Stephenson has worked part-time as an advisor for Blue Origin, a company (founded by Jeff Bezos) developing a spacecraft and a space launch system, and also co-founded the Subutai Corporation, whose first offering is the interactive fiction project ''The Mongoliad''. He was Magic Leap's Chief Futurist from 2014 to 2020. Early life Born on October 31, 1959, in Fort Meade, Maryland, Stephenson came from a family of engineers and scienti ...
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John Wallop, 2nd Earl Of Portsmouth
John Wallop, 2nd Earl of Portsmouth (29 June 1742 – 16 May 1797), styled Hon. John Wallop from 1743 to 1749 and Viscount Lymington from 1749 to 1762, was a British nobleman. He was the son of John Wallop, Viscount Lymington and his wife Catherine. Through his father he inherited the Wallop electoral interests at Andover, near the family seat of Hurstbourne Park, and through his mother, those of the Conduitt family at Whitchurch, although his influence there had ceased by 1774. His father died at the age of 31 in 1749; Wallop, now styled "Viscount Lymington," did not inherit the earldom from his grandfather until 1762. On 1 October 1755, he was created a DCL of Oxford. On 27 August 1763, Portsmouth married Urania Fellowes (d. 1812), daughter of Coulson Fellowes. They had four sons and four daughters:''Debrett's Peerage'' *John Wallop, 3rd Earl of Portsmouth (1767–1853) *Lady Urania Anabella Wallop (1 June 1769 – 17 December 1844) *Lady Camilla Maria Wallop (8 November 1 ...
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Earl Of Portsmouth
Earl of Portsmouth is a title in the Peerage of Great Britain. After the death of Louise de Kérouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth (c. 19 August 1673 - 14 November 1734), it was created in 1743 for John Wallop, 1st Viscount Lymington, who had previously represented Hampshire in the House of Commons. He had already been created Baron Wallop, of Farleigh Wallop in Hampshire in the County of Southampton, and Viscount Lymington, in 1720, also in the Peerage of Great Britain. The second earl was the son of Catherine Conduitt, whose mother was Catherine Barton, half-niece of the eminent mathematical scientist Sir Isaac Newton. The earls of Portsmouth therefore are direct descendants of Isaac Newton's mother, and three of the earls have been named after Newton. The earls were in possession of a large trove of Newton's personal papers, until they were auctioned in 1936. Those documents are commonly known as the "Portsmouth Papers". The third Earl declared himself King of Hampshir ...
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John Wallop, Viscount Lymington
John Wallop, Viscount Lymington (3 August 1718 – 19 November 1749) was a British politician, styled Hon. John Wallop from 1720 to 1743. Early life The eldest son of John Wallop, 1st Viscount Lymington, Wallop was educated at Winchester School from 1731 to 1734 and at Christ Church, Oxford in 1735. From 1739 to 1740, he was mayor of Lymington. Family On 8 July 1740, he married Catherine Conduit (d. 15 April 1750), the daughter of John Conduitt and great-niece of Isaac Newton, by whom he had four sons and a daughter: *John Wallop, 2nd Earl of Portsmouth (1742–1797), who succeeded his grandfather as Earl of Portsmouth **Lady Urania Annabella Wallop, died 17 Dec 1844 **Lady Henrietta Dorothea Wallop, died 10 Jun 1862 ** John Charles Wallop, 3rd Earl of Portsmouth, born 18 Dec 1767, died 14 Jul 1853, married firstly, Hon. Grace Norton, daughter of Fletcher Norton, 1st Baron Grantley, and Grace Chapple, he married secondly, Mary Anne Hanson, daughter of John Hanson (the marriag ...
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Newton Project
The Newton Project is an academic digital humanities project based at the University of Oxford that transcribes, digitises, contextualises, and makes publicly accessible the work of Isaac Newton. The project originated in 1998 and it has been undertaken in close collaboration with Cambridge University Digital Library, the National Library of Israel, the Chymistry of Isaac Newton Project at Indiana University Bloomington, and the Newton Project Canada at the University of King's College. History The Newton Project was started in 1998 by Rob Iliffe and Scott Mandelbrote, with its core functions directed by Iliffe since 1999. Originally the project was based at the University of Sussex The University of Sussex is a public university, public research university, research university located in Falmer, East Sussex, England. It lies mostly within the city boundaries of Brighton and Hove. Its large campus site is surrounded by the ... and the aim was to produce a comprehensi ...
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Sotheby's
Sotheby's ( ) is a British-founded multinational corporation with headquarters in New York City. It is one of the world's largest brokers of fine art, fine and decorative art, jewellery, and collectibles. It has 80 locations in 40 countries, and maintains a significant presence in the UK. Sotheby's was established on 11 March 1744 in London by Samuel Baker, a bookseller. In 1767 the firm became Baker & Leigh, after George Leigh became a partner, and was renamed to Leigh and Sotheby in 1778 after Baker's death when his nephew, John Sotheby, inherited Leigh's share. Other former names include: Leigh, Sotheby and Wilkinson; Sotheby, Wilkinson and Hodge (1864–1924); Sotheby and Company (1924–83); Mssrs Sotheby; Sotheby & Wilkinson; Sotheby Mak van Waay; and Sotheby's & Co. The American holding company was initially incorporated in August 1983 in Michigan as Sotheby's Holdings, Inc. In June 2006, it was reincorporated in the State of Delaware and was renamed Sotheby's. In June ...
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