In Victorian Britain, every schoolboy knew that Sir Isaac Newton was an unrivalled mathematical and scientific genius, and most would have been able to give a basic account of his central discoveries. In optics, Newton found that white light was not a fundamental element within nature but was composed of more basic, primary rays being mixed together. Bodies appeared a particular colour because they had a disposition to reflect or absorb certain colours rather than others. In the realm of mathematics, Newton discovered the binomial theorem for expanding the sum of two variables raised to any given power, as well as the basic laws of calculus. This treated the rate of change of any variable (the shape of a curve or the velocity of a moving object) at any moment, and also offered techniques for measuring areas and volumes under curves (amongst other things). Both his mathematical and optical work took many decades to be fully accepted by contemporaries, the first because his work was shown only to a handful of contemporaries, and the second because many found it hard to reproduce and too revolutionary to be easily grasped.
在维多利亚女王时代的英国，每位学童都知道艾萨克·牛顿爵士是一位无与伦比的数学天才和科学天才，而且大部分学童还能基本道出牛顿的主要科学发现。在光学上，牛顿发现白光并不是自然界中的基本元素，而是由几种更基本、更原始的光线混合组成的。物体之所以呈现出一定的颜色，是因为物体具有反射某些色光而吸收其他色光的属性。在数学领域，牛顿发现了二项式定理和微积分的基本定律。二项式定理用于展开两个变量之和的任何次幂，而微积分研究的是任意变量（一条曲线的形状或一个移动物体的速度）的瞬时变化率问题，同时也提供了计算曲线面积和曲面体积的技巧（当然还有其他用途）。牛顿在数学和光学上的成就过了好几十年才完全为他的同代人所接受，这首先是因为他只给少数几个同代人展示过自己的工作成果，其次是因为许多同代人感到他的工作成果难以让人重复，而且太具革新性，不易领会。
2022-10-29
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