When Anjana Ahuja referred to Isaac Newton in her article on Elon Musk allegedly breaching the code of conduct of the UK’s Royal Society (“Musk is the fox in the henhouse of science”, Opinion, March 5), I expected her to conclude with a reference to Newton’s own conduct, to make the observation that such friction between members is not new.
The German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz appealed to the society to resolve his dispute with Newton over who discovered calculus first. According to Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time, Newton, as president of the society, appointed a committee to investigate consisting entirely of his friends. Newton wrote the committee’s report himself and officially accused Leibniz of plagiarism. Hawking tells us that following Leibniz’s death, Newton boasted he had taken great satisfaction in “breaking Leibniz’s heart”.
Timothy Barry
Tokyo, Japan
