Sir Isaac Newton's personal notes put online

Cambridge University has put online 4,000 pages of scientific and mathematical manuscripts authored by Sir Isaac Newton.

The first installment of the Cambridge Newton papers is now available for public perusal at the university's  new digital library website. The trove features many of Newton's most important work from the 1660s, including his college notebooks while an undergraduate at Trinity College as well as his Waste Book, in which he developed his most important work on calculus.

Cambridge Newton papers
History of Isaac Newton's papers

The collection also includes an annotated copy of Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, a seminal book in the history of science in which Newton laid out his law of universal gravitation.

Newton, who matriculated at Cambridge in 1661, graduated four years later. He went on to teach mathematics at Cambridge between 1669 and 1701. Terms of employment at the time required Newton to deposit copies of his lectures in the university library. Over the succeeding centuries, the library added to its collection of Newton documents, helped out by donations from Newton's own heirs as well as from private donations. Ultimately, the library hopes to make the "majority" of its Newton Papers publicly available online.