Andrew Robinson, Nature; Isaac Newton’s remarkable year — and the plagiarism accusations that followed
"Another controversy was Newton’s famous clash with polymath Robert Hooke, who was also a key figure in the Royal Society in London. At issue was who had first discovered the inverse-square law of gravitation, which states that gravity’s force decreases with the square of distance. Hooke wanted acknowledgement of his relevant efforts in the preface to Principia Mathematica, but Newton refused, telling astronomer Edmond Halley — who was supervising the book’s publication — that he would rather suppress publication of its third volume than give Hooke any credit.
As the authors discuss in a lengthy chapter, Newton had originally told Halley that he would be willing to acknowledge Hooke’s assistance in book III of Principia. But then Hooke lashed out at Newton at the 1686 meeting of the Royal Society, and “once confronted with the charge of plagiarism, whatever goodwill Newton possessed vanished”."
