Voltaire: 1994, the 300th anniversary of his birth: His legacy and his compeers, then and since

Abstract We first give a resume of the life of Voltaire with accents on his interests in science and engineering. His writings are broadly categorized and noted for their variety, quality and volume. He was a great man of letters with wide appreciations and sympathies. The impact of his work on the thinking of educated people helped give birth to the Enlightenment. He spanned political and ethical matters with his essays, pamphlets and plays and for these and his histories, satires and novels he is justly remembered. Voltaire spent several years endeavouring to promote a liberating Newtonianism, writing books and pamphlets on pure and applied science. He has received less than his due credit for this latter service, which we here try to make more prominent than is usual. A comparison is made between him and contemporaries Samuel Johnson and Benjamin Franklin, principally. We propose that the closest modern approximation to him, in breadth of general interests, is H. G. Wells. We find, in effect, a celebration of Voltaire's birth in two excellent recent classical analyses of his scientific works, which emanate from the Voltaire Foundation at Oxford with its critical editions of The Elements of the Philosophy of Isaac Newton (published 1992) and Essay on the Nature and Propagation of Fire (1991).