Voltaire and the Newtonian Revolution - HAPP Centre - Professor Robert Iliffe

Although Voltaire is known predominantly as the leading philosopher, dramatist and poet of the Enlightenment, slightly less well known is his enthusiasm for the work of Newton in many of its aspects (both gravitation and optics) and its role in supplanting the previously dominant Cartesian worldview.
In the promotion of the Newtonian theory he was aided in large part by his long-time companion and leading woman scientist of her era, the Marquise Émilie du Châtelet, herself at the forefront of the mathematics of the era and the translator of Newton's Principia into French. This conference explores Voltaire's and du Châtelet's roles in the promotion of Newtonian theory as well as their activities in the physics of their era such as their investigations, both theoretical and experimental, into the nature of fire and combustion.
The St Cross Centre for the History and Philosophy of Physics (HAPP) has been established in the first instance to bring together the community of scholars in the history and philosophy of physics in Oxford, the United Kingdom and beyond.