One
of the anecdotes I like the most about celestial mechanics is the one
describing when Christiaan Huygens on his third visit to England, in 1689, meet
Isaac Newton and, during the tea break in Newton’s house, asked if the great
genius believed planetary orbits to be circular or elliptical and Newton just
replied that “they are elliptical, of course!” When Huygens further inquired on
how would he be so sure, Newton simply added; “Oh, I calculated that a while
ago, and my calculations should be here somewhere…” but he could not find those
pages in the confusion of his room so he promised to redo the calculations and,
after little time, Huygens received a full treatise on planetary orbits
including what we call Newton’s theorem of revolving orbits... a consequence of
Gravitation and one of the basics in classical mechanics... Probably, if
Huygens would not have asked, Newton might even have forgotten about one of his
(many) great achievements... (Dr. Divago)
