author
Henry Pemberton
1694–1771
A physician, writer, and close associate of Isaac Newton, he helped bring some of Newton’s most important ideas to a wider audience. His career moved between medicine, mathematics, and natural philosophy in a way that feels strikingly modern.
1 Audiobook
A View of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophy
by Henry Pemberton
About the author
Born in London in 1694, Henry Pemberton studied medicine at Leiden and went on to build a reputation as both a physician and a man of letters. He became Gresham Professor of Physic and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, moving in the leading scientific circles of eighteenth-century Britain.
He is best remembered for his connection with Isaac Newton. Pemberton edited the third edition of Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica and later wrote A View of Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophy, a book that helped explain Newton’s ideas to a broader readership.
Although not as famous now as some of his contemporaries, Pemberton stands out as a thoughtful interpreter of science as well as a practitioner of medicine. His work sits at an interesting meeting point of literature, scholarship, and early modern science.