The University of Sydney copy of Principia has been digitised and is available online alongside other digital resources via the University’s digital collection.

Ms Sommerfeldt described the condition of the book as excellent: 'With careful handling, this copy will hopefully withstand centuries to come so that future generations can enjoy and study it.' Principia remained hidden in the chests until the Hon Arthur Bruce Smith stumbled across the book, purchasing it sight unseen after seeing it on a list of books for sale shortly after the chests arrived in Australia. The book remained in an old clock tower in the James estate in Kent for about 140 years before it travelled to Australia in the hands of Harry Constantine Adolphus Elderton in 1854.Ī distant relative of the James family, he inherited eight chests of books from the estate. Blomfield examining the first-edition copy Professor Sir Stephen Roberts, the Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the University of Sydney, and Mr R. Newton was President of the Royal Society from 1703 to 1727. Professor Williamson last year was elected as the youngest living Fellow of the Royal Society, the world’s oldest scientific academy and publisher of Principia. 'Through Principia, Newtown established the fundamental fact that the same laws apply here on Earth as those in the heavens.' Before Newton, European science considered there was a fundamental divide between ‘Heaven and Earth.'

'Isaac Newtown totally rewrote the rule book in terms of the separation of what happens on Earth and what happens in space. Without this work, for instance, Maxwell’s equations governing electricity or Fourier series equations on heat, would not have been possible,' said Professor Williamson, Director of the Sydney Mathematical Research Institute at the University. 'The publication was really the first time we saw a physical law that was true everywhere. Professor Geordie Williamson (left) is Director of the University of Sydney Mathematical Research Institute.

Principia of mathematics