Sir Issac Newton’s 300-Year-Old Textbooks Discovered in UK School

A box of books said to be that of Sir Isaac Newton, in the school physics laboratory of Newcastle-under-Lyme School, Staffordshire in UK were discovered in the first week of February 2013. The textbooks are over 300 years old and contain works of Sir Issac Newton who is credited with discovery of gravity.

The auctioneers estimated that the discovery could be worth thousands of pounds. The books were discovered by the sixth-form physics student Will Garside while working on the artefacts from the school site.

The books contained Newton’s Laws of Motion as well as the account of principles of gravity spread across over 1000 pages. The discovered books are a set of three volumes and are said to be the property of first headmaster, Francis Elliot Kitchener, who was a keen scientist. The three books are known as Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, meaning mathematical principles of natural philosophy. They were first published on 5 July 1687.

The work of Sir Issac Newton was translated in English in 1728. Sir Newton was leading scientist in subjects such as alchemy, theology, natural philosophy and astronomy. He was born in 1642 and died in 1727.