Contact:  Rick Peterson, Manager of News Services, 920/832-6590
For Immediate Release	                                   February 16, 1999						

     Lawrence University Physicist Awarded Rockefeller Fellowship to Study in
Italy


          APPLETON, WIS. -- J. Bruce Brackenridge, professor emeritus of
physics at Lawrence University, has been named one of 140 national recipients 
of a 1999 Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship at the Bellagio Study Center in 
Como, Italy.  
     Brackenridge will spend a month-long residency this August at Bellagio,
completing work on a book he is writing based on the 1684 "lost manuscript"
of Sir Isaac Newton's Latin tract, "On the motion of bodies in orbit."  The
manuscript, one of Newton's earliest works, was the basis for his subsequent
theories on planetary motion.
     In his book, Brackenridge will analyze the mathematical principles used
by Newton to explain planetary orbit. The book also will include Newton's
original Latin text and a face-to-face English translation provided by his
wife, classical scholar Mary Ann Rossi. 
     Brackenridge's latest work will be a follow-up to his 1995 book, "The
Keys to Newton's Dynamics," a scholarly analysis of Newton's masterpiece,
"The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy," which is widely
considered the greatest work in the history of Western science. 
     A member of the Lawrence faculty since 1959, Brackenridge began his
teaching career as a physicist but has since shifted his academic interests
to more interdisciplinary subjects and is now considered one of the
country's leading scholars on the history of science.  He retired from the
faculty in 1996, but will return to the classroom this spring to teach a
course on the foundations of modern science.