Today Cambridge University offered a complete free digital archive of the personal papers of Sir Isaac Newton, including the Principa Mathematica and his first published research paper. The archives join a number of efforts to open original works of scientific greatness to the world:

• Charles Darwin's entire personal library, complete with annotations and handwritten marginalia, digitized, indexed, and searchable, part of the Biodiversity Heritage Library (previously)
• Mapping The Republic of Letters and Electronic Enlightenment, wonderful sites showing the communication and social connections of Enlightenment writers.

Newton's original works are handily supplemented by The Newton Project, showing the man's insertions and deletions to his own work.
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul on Dec 12, 2011 - 10 comments

The Royal Society , publishers of the world's oldest peer-reviewed scientific journal, Philosophical Transactions, has made their journal archive free to access. [more inside]
posted by BitterOldPunk on Oct 26, 2011 - 28 comments

To celebrate the start of its 350th year, the Royal Society has put online 60 of its most memorable scientific papers. [more inside]
posted by Electric Dragon on Nov 30, 2009 - 28 comments

The Royal Society Digital Archive is now on-line and free to use ... until December. Until that time, every article in its collections, going back to 1665, is freely accessible. Poke around, who knows what you might find ... [pdf]
posted by Sonny Jim on Sep 22, 2006 - 21 comments