Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.14720

    Diagram

    Date
    14 September 1669
    Creator
    Henry Oldenburg (1612 - 1677, German) , Scientific correspondent
    Object type
    Archive reference number
    Manuscript page number
    p178
    Material
    Dimensions
    height (page): 309mm
    width (page): 200mm
    Subject
    Description
    Diagram of the problem John Collins wished Henry Oldenburg to pose to Renatus Franciscus Slusius: whether he had a construction 'for salving of Solid problemes, wherein the Axes either of a Parabola or Hyperbola, and the longer Axis of an Ellipses or any two of these figures may meet without the concave figure'.

    Collins wrote the letter in English, which Oldenburg then translated into Latin. The Latin version of the letter is the one depicted here, in its copied form in the Letter Book. It is also copied in LBC/3/217. Collins had included a diagram in his original English note, which can be found in Cl.P/24/36/001.
    Object history
    The original English letter from Collins to Oldenburg is transcribed in The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, ed. by A. Rupert Hall and Marie Boas Hall, 13 vols (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press; London: Taylor and Francis, 1965-86), VI (1969), 226-31, where this is dated c. 12 September 1669. This neat letter was copied from two different sources, the original letter (now only surviving in LBO/3) and a Post Script with diagram that can now be found in Cl.P/24/36. The Latin letter Oldenburg sent to Slusius on the basis of Collins’s English letter is transcribed in the same volume, on pp. 232-36.
    Related fellows
    Renatus Franciscus Slusius (1622 - 1685, Belgian) , Mathematician
    John Collins (1936, American) , Mathematician
    Henry Oldenburg (1612 - 1677, German) , Scientific correspondent
    Associated place
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