Henry Pemberton

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Henry Pemberton (* 1694 in London ; † March 9, 1771 , ibid) was an English doctor, mathematician and physicist . In 1728 he succeeded John Woodward as professor of medicine at Gresham College in London.

Pemberton studied medicine from 1714 at the University of Leiden , including with Herman Boerhaave , and in Paris , where he studied anatomy. He also studied mathematics, which he began at school by studying Apollonius in the Halley edition and for which he bought books from the library of the late Abbé Jean Gallois in Paris. After returning to London around 1715 he was for further training at St. Thomas Hospital and then received his doctorate in 1719 at the University of Leiden under Boerhaave. In his dissertation he dealt with the adaptation of the eye to different distances, which he correctly attributed to a change in the shape of the lens through muscle power. After Richard Westfall , this was his most significant independent scientific contribution.

After returning to London, however, he seldom practiced as a doctor, as his health did not allow this. Instead, he made contact with leading scientists and especially Isaac Newton , published on a wide variety of topics (from mathematics and astronomy to poetry), for example (after he had become a Fellow of the Royal Society ) in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. He built a reputation for medical publications so that he became professor of medicine at Gresham College in 1728, where he also gave lectures on chemistry published posthumously in 1771 by his friend James Wilson, as well as his lectures on physiology in 1779. He brought also a new, improved edition of the drug manual of the Royal College of Physicians (London Pharmacopeia), which he was busy 1739-1746.

From 1723 Pemberton supported Newton in the preparation of the third edition (1726) of his Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy) and published a popular science book on his physical theory (published in German translation by Salomon Maimon in Berlin in 1793). The third edition of the Principia was the final edition , but it brought no significant changes from the second edition, edited by Roger Cotes , an eminent mathematician whose skills Pemberton did not match. Since Pemberton was in close contact with Newton in the last years of his life and was close friends with Newton, his writings on Newton have a special authenticity. Pemberton's friendship with Newton began when he criticized a proof by Giovanni Poleni about Leibniz's formula for kinetic energy (Newton, as is well known, was involved in a violent priority dispute with Leibniz). At the same time, Pemberton exuberantly expressed his admiration for Newton, which Newton found benevolent when his personal physician Richard Mead (1673–1754) brought the article to his attention. Pemberton also edited the new edition of Myotomia Reformata by William Cowper (1724) for Mead .

Pemberton also planned an English translation of the Principia and a commentary, but Andrew Motte (whose translation appeared in 1729) got ahead of him and abandoned his plans.

He promoted the engineer Benjamin Robins , whose mathematical talent he noticed.

Since 1720 Pemberton was a Fellow of the Royal Society and since 1746 a foreign member of the Royal Prussian Society of Sciences .

Works

  • View of Sir Isaac Newton's philosophy. Printed by S. Palmer, London 1728. Online

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ In older English as physic referred
  2. ↑ Article Pemberton in Dictionary of Scientific Biography
  3. ↑ He promoted, for example, Richard Glover , of which he wrote a poem about Newton in his book View of Newton's Philosophy recorded
  4. ↑ Pemberton himself published an overview in 1731
  5. ^ Westfall, loc. cit .: The meagerness of his contribution, in comparison with the promise of his thesis at Leiden, suggests how deadening the role of sycophant can be
  6. ↑ Hans-Uwe Lammel: Mead, Richard. In: Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 900.
  7. ^ I. Bernard Cohen Pemberton's Translation of Newtons Principia, with notes on Motte's translation , Isis, Volume 54, 1963, p. 319
personal data
SURNAME Pemberton, Henry
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English physician, mathematician and natural scientist
DATE OF BIRTH 1694
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH March 9, 1771
Place of death London