Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.15882

    Diagram of a prism

    Date
    3 April 1672
    Creator
    Ignace-Gaston Pardies (1636 - 1673, French) , Natural philosopher
    Object type
    Archive reference number
    Manuscript page number
    p3
    Material
    Dimensions
    height (page): 197mm
    width (page): 157mm
    Subject
    Physics
       > Optics
    Content object
    Description
    The figure of a prism in Ignace-Gaston Pardies's criticism of Isaac Newton's 'experimentum crucis', in a letter of 3 April 1672 to Henry Oldenburg. These comments were passed on to Newton, who wrote a reply on 13 April 1672. The letter by Pardies and Newton's reply were read at the meeting of the Royal Society on 18 April 1672, and were printed in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, vol. 7, no. 84 (June 1672).

    There are copies of this diagram at LBO/5/205 and LBC/5/226.
    Object history
    At the meeting of the Royal Society on 18 April 1672, ‘Several letters to Mr. Oldenburg were read. [...] A letter from father Pardies the Jesuit, professor of mathematics in the college of Clermont in Paris, dated there April 9, 1672, N.S. containing some objections against Mr. Newton’s theory of light and colours. A letter from Mr. Newton, dated at Cambridge April 13, 1672, containing an answer to the objection of the said Jesuit’ (Birch, 3:43).

    Printed as a woodcut figure in I. G. Pardies 'Newton's theory of light and color', Phil. Trans. vol. 7, no. 84 (June 1672), pp. 4087-90 (p. 4088).
    Related fellows
    Henry Oldenburg (1612 - 1677, German) , Scientific correspondent
    Associated place
    <The World>
       > Europe
          > France
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