Collins, by his extensive correspondence, spread the knowledge of this discovery among the mathematicians in England, Scotland, France, Holland and Italy.
Dr. Barrow, having resolved to devote himself to Theology, resigned the Lucasian Professorship of Mathematics, in 1669, in favour of Newton, who accordingly received the appointment to the vacant chair.
During the years 1669, 1670, and 1671, our author, as such Professor, delivered a course of Optical Lectures. Though these contained his principal discoveries relative to the different refrangibility of light, yet the discoveries themselves did not be come publicly known, it seems, till he communicated them to the Royal Society, a few weeks after being elected a member thereof, in the spring of 1671-2. He now rose rapidly in reputation, and was soon regarded as foremost among the philosophers of the age. His paper on light excited the deepest interest in the Royal Society, who manifested an anxious solicitude to secure the author from the "arrogations of others," and proposed to publish his discourse in the monthly numbers in which the Transactions were given to the world. Newton, gratefully sensible of these expressions of esteem, willingly accepted of the proposal for publication. He gave them also, at this time, the results of some further experiments in the decomposition and re-composition of light:—that the same degree of refrangibility always belonged to the same colour, and the same colour to the same degree of refrangibility: that the seven different colours of the spectrum were original, or simple, and that whiteness, or white light was a compound of all these seven colours.
The publication of his new doctrines on light soon called forth violent opposition as to their soundness. Hooke and Huygens—men eminent for ability and learning—were the most conspicuous of the assailants. And though Newton effectually silenced all his adversaries, yet he felt the triumph of little gain in comparison with the loss his tranquillity had sustained. He subsequently remarked in allusion to this controversy—and to one with whom he was destined to have a longer and a bitterer conflict—"I was so persecuted with discussions arising from the publication of my
