Keynes, Newton and the Royal Society: the events of 1942 and 1943

Abstract

Most discussions of John Maynard Keynes's activities in connection with Newton are restricted to the sale in 1936 at Sotheby's of Newton's Portsmouth Papers and to Keynes's 1946 essay ‘Newton, the Man’. This paper provides a history of Keynes's Newton-related work in the interim, highlighting especially the events of 1942 and 1943, which were particularly relevant to the Royal Society's role in the domestic and international promotion of Newton's legacy. During this period, Keynes lectured twice on Newton, leaving notes that would later be read by his brother Geoffrey in the famous commemoration of the Newton tercentenary in 1946. In 1943 Keynes assisted the Royal Society in its recognition of the Soviet celebrations and in the acquisition and preservation of more of the Newton library. In each instance Keynes took the opportunity to promote his interpretation of Newton as ‘the last of the magicians’: a scientist who had one foot in the pre-modern world and whose approach to understanding the world was as much intuitive as it was methodical.