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Formative influences

Influence of the scientific revolution, work during the plague years.

• Inaugural lectures at Trinity
• Controversy
• Influence of the Hermetic tradition
• Planetary motion
• Universal gravitation
• Warden of the mint
• Interest in religion and theology
• Leader of English science
• Final years

What is Isaac Newton most famous for?

How was isaac newton educated, what was isaac newton’s childhood like.

• What is the Scientific Revolution?
• How is the Scientific Revolution connected to the Enlightenment?

Isaac Newton

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• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Biography of Isaac Newton
• University of British Columbia - Physics and Astronomy Department - The Life and Work of Newton
• LiveScience - Biography of Isaac Newton
• Physics LibreTexts - Newton's Laws of Motion
• Isaac Newton - Children's Encyclopedia (Ages 8-11)
• Isaac Newton - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)
• Table Of Contents

Although Isaac Newton is well known for his discoveries in optics (white light composition) and mathematics ( calculus ), it is his formulation of the three laws of motion —the basic principles of modern physics—for which he is most famous. His formulation of the laws of motion resulted in the law of universal gravitation .

After interrupted attendance at the grammar school in Grantham, Lincolnshire , England , Isaac Newton finally settled down to prepare for university, going on to Trinity College, Cambridge , in 1661, somewhat older than his classmates. There he immersed himself in Aristotle ’s work and discovered the works of René Descartes before graduating in 1665 with a bachelor’s degree.

Isaac Newton was born to a widowed mother (his father died three months prior) and was not expected to survive, being tiny and weak. Shortly thereafter Newton was sent by his stepfather, the well-to-do minister Barnabas Smith, to live with his grandmother and was separated from his mother until Smith’s death in 1653.

What did Isaac Newton write?

Isaac Newton is widely known for his published work Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687), commonly known as the  Principia . His laws of motion first appeared in this work. It is one of the most important single works in the history of modern science .

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Isaac Newton (born December 25, 1642 [January 4, 1643, New Style], Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire , England—died March 20 [March 31], 1727, London) was an English physicist and mathematician who was the culminating figure of the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century. In optics , his discovery of the composition of white light integrated the phenomena of colours into the science of light and laid the foundation for modern physical optics. In mechanics , his three laws of motion , the basic principles of modern physics , resulted in the formulation of the law of universal gravitation . In mathematics , he was the original discoverer of the infinitesimal calculus . Newton’s Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica ( Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy , 1687) was one of the most important single works in the history of modern science.

Born in the hamlet of Woolsthorpe, Newton was the only son of a local yeoman , also Isaac Newton, who had died three months before, and of Hannah Ayscough. That same year, at Arcetri near Florence, Galileo Galilei had died; Newton would eventually pick up his idea of a mathematical science of motion and bring his work to full fruition . A tiny and weak baby, Newton was not expected to survive his first day of life, much less 84 years. Deprived of a father before birth, he soon lost his mother as well, for within two years she married a second time; her husband, the well-to-do minister Barnabas Smith, left young Isaac with his grandmother and moved to a neighbouring village to raise a son and two daughters. For nine years, until the death of Barnabas Smith in 1653, Isaac was effectively separated from his mother, and his pronounced psychotic tendencies have been ascribed to this traumatic event. That he hated his stepfather we may be sure. When he examined the state of his soul in 1662 and compiled a catalog of sins in shorthand, he remembered “Threatning my father and mother Smith to burne them and the house over them.” The acute sense of insecurity that rendered him obsessively anxious when his work was published and irrationally violent when he defended it accompanied Newton throughout his life and can plausibly be traced to his early years.

After his mother was widowed a second time, she determined that her first-born son should manage her now considerable property. It quickly became apparent, however, that this would be a disaster, both for the estate and for Newton. He could not bring himself to concentrate on rural affairs—set to watch the cattle, he would curl up under a tree with a book. Fortunately, the mistake was recognized, and Newton was sent back to the grammar school in Grantham , where he had already studied, to prepare for the university. As with many of the leading scientists of the age, he left behind in Grantham anecdotes about his mechanical ability and his skill in building models of machines, such as clocks and windmills . At the school he apparently gained a firm command of Latin but probably received no more than a smattering of arithmetic. By June 1661 he was ready to matriculate at Trinity College , Cambridge , somewhat older than the other undergraduates because of his interrupted education.

When Newton arrived in Cambridge in 1661, the movement now known as the Scientific Revolution was well advanced, and many of the works basic to modern science had appeared. Astronomers from Nicolaus Copernicus to Johannes Kepler had elaborated the heliocentric system of the universe . Galileo had proposed the foundations of a new mechanics built on the principle of inertia . Led by René Descartes , philosophers had begun to formulate a new conception of nature as an intricate, impersonal, and inert machine. Yet as far as the universities of Europe, including Cambridge, were concerned, all this might well have never happened. They continued to be the strongholds of outmoded Aristotelianism , which rested on a geocentric view of the universe and dealt with nature in qualitative rather than quantitative terms.

Like thousands of other undergraduates, Newton began his higher education by immersing himself in Aristotle’s work. Even though the new philosophy was not in the curriculum, it was in the air. Some time during his undergraduate career, Newton discovered the works of the French natural philosopher Descartes and the other mechanical philosophers, who, in contrast to Aristotle, viewed physical reality as composed entirely of particles of matter in motion and who held that all the phenomena of nature result from their mechanical interaction. A new set of notes, which he entitled “ Quaestiones Quaedam Philosophicae ” (“Certain Philosophical Questions”), begun sometime in 1664, usurped the unused pages of a notebook intended for traditional scholastic exercises; under the title he entered the slogan “Amicus Plato amicus Aristoteles magis amica veritas” (“Plato is my friend, Aristotle is my friend, but my best friend is truth”). Newton’s scientific career had begun.

The “Quaestiones” reveal that Newton had discovered the new conception of nature that provided the framework of the Scientific Revolution. He had thoroughly mastered the works of Descartes and had also discovered that the French philosopher Pierre Gassendi had revived atomism , an alternative mechanical system to explain nature. The “Quaestiones” also reveal that Newton already was inclined to find the latter a more attractive philosophy than Cartesian natural philosophy, which rejected the existence of ultimate indivisible particles. The works of the 17th-century chemist Robert Boyle provided the foundation for Newton’s considerable work in chemistry. Significantly, he had read Henry More , the Cambridge Platonist, and was thereby introduced to another intellectual world, the magical Hermetic tradition, which sought to explain natural phenomena in terms of alchemical and magical concepts. The two traditions of natural philosophy, the mechanical and the Hermetic, antithetical though they appear, continued to influence his thought and in their tension supplied the fundamental theme of his scientific career.

Although he did not record it in the “Quaestiones,” Newton had also begun his mathematical studies. He again started with Descartes, from whose La Géometrie he branched out into the other literature of modern analysis with its application of algebraic techniques to problems of geometry . He then reached back for the support of classical geometry. Within little more than a year, he had mastered the literature; and, pursuing his own line of analysis, he began to move into new territory. He discovered the binomial theorem , and he developed the calculus , a more powerful form of analysis that employs infinitesimal considerations in finding the slopes of curves and areas under curves.

By 1669 Newton was ready to write a tract summarizing his progress, De Analysi per Aequationes Numeri Terminorum Infinitas (“On Analysis by Infinite Series”), which circulated in manuscript through a limited circle and made his name known. During the next two years he revised it as De methodis serierum et fluxionum (“ On the Methods of Series and Fluxions ”). The word fluxions , Newton’s private rubric, indicates that the calculus had been born. Despite the fact that only a handful of savants were even aware of Newton’s existence, he had arrived at the point where he had become the leading mathematician in Europe.

When Newton received the bachelor’s degree in April 1665, the most remarkable undergraduate career in the history of university education had passed unrecognized. On his own, without formal guidance, he had sought out the new philosophy and the new mathematics and made them his own, but he had confined the progress of his studies to his notebooks. Then, in 1665, the plague closed the university, and for most of the following two years he was forced to stay at his home, contemplating at leisure what he had learned. During the plague years Newton laid the foundations of the calculus and extended an earlier insight into an essay, “Of Colours,” which contains most of the ideas elaborated in his Opticks . It was during this time that he examined the elements of circular motion and, applying his analysis to the Moon and the planets , derived the inverse square relation that the radially directed force acting on a planet decreases with the square of its distance from the Sun —which was later crucial to the law of universal gravitation. The world heard nothing of these discoveries.

Isaac Newton

Isaac Newton was an English physicist and mathematician famous for his laws of physics. He was a key figure in the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century.

(1643-1727)

Who Was Isaac Newton?

In 1687, he published his most acclaimed work, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy) , which has been called the single most influential book on physics. In 1705, he was knighted by Queen Anne of England, making him Sir Isaac Newton.

Early Life and Family

Newton was born on January 4, 1643, in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England. Using the "old" Julian calendar, Newton's birth date is sometimes displayed as December 25, 1642.

Newton was the only son of a prosperous local farmer, also named Isaac, who died three months before he was born. A premature baby born tiny and weak, Newton was not expected to survive.

When he was 3 years old, his mother, Hannah Ayscough Newton, remarried a well-to-do minister, Barnabas Smith, and went to live with him, leaving young Newton with his maternal grandmother.

The experience left an indelible imprint on Newton, later manifesting itself as an acute sense of insecurity. He anxiously obsessed over his published work, defending its merits with irrational behavior.

At age 12, Newton was reunited with his mother after her second husband died. She brought along her three small children from her second marriage.

Isaac Newton's Education

Newton was enrolled at the King's School in Grantham, a town in Lincolnshire, where he lodged with a local apothecary and was introduced to the fascinating world of chemistry.

His mother pulled him out of school at age 12. Her plan was to make him a farmer and have him tend the farm. Newton failed miserably, as he found farming monotonous. Newton was soon sent back to King's School to finish his basic education.

Perhaps sensing the young man's innate intellectual abilities, his uncle, a graduate of the University of Cambridge's Trinity College , persuaded Newton's mother to have him enter the university. Newton enrolled in a program similar to a work-study in 1661, and subsequently waited on tables and took care of wealthier students' rooms.

Scientific Revolution

When Newton arrived at Cambridge, the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century was already in full force. The heliocentric view of the universe—theorized by astronomers Nicolaus Copernicus and Johannes Kepler, and later refined by Galileo —was well known in most European academic circles.

Philosopher René Descartes had begun to formulate a new concept of nature as an intricate, impersonal and inert machine. Yet, like most universities in Europe, Cambridge was steeped in Aristotelian philosophy and a view of nature resting on a geocentric view of the universe, dealing with nature in qualitative rather than quantitative terms.

During his first three years at Cambridge, Newton was taught the standard curriculum but was fascinated with the more advanced science. All his spare time was spent reading from the modern philosophers. The result was a less-than-stellar performance, but one that is understandable, given his dual course of study.

It was during this time that Newton kept a second set of notes, entitled "Quaestiones Quaedam Philosophicae" ("Certain Philosophical Questions"). The "Quaestiones" reveal that Newton had discovered the new concept of nature that provided the framework for the Scientific Revolution. Though Newton graduated without honors or distinctions, his efforts won him the title of scholar and four years of financial support for future education.

In 1665, the bubonic plague that was ravaging Europe had come to Cambridge, forcing the university to close. After a two-year hiatus, Newton returned to Cambridge in 1667 and was elected a minor fellow at Trinity College, as he was still not considered a standout scholar.

In the ensuing years, his fortune improved. Newton received his Master of Arts degree in 1669, before he was 27. During this time, he came across Nicholas Mercator's published book on methods for dealing with infinite series.

Newton quickly wrote a treatise, De Analysi , expounding his own wider-ranging results. He shared this with friend and mentor Isaac Barrow, but didn't include his name as author.

In June 1669, Barrow shared the unaccredited manuscript with British mathematician John Collins. In August 1669, Barrow identified its author to Collins as "Mr. Newton ... very young ... but of an extraordinary genius and proficiency in these things."

Newton's work was brought to the attention of the mathematics community for the first time. Shortly afterward, Barrow resigned his Lucasian professorship at Cambridge, and Newton assumed the chair.

Isaac Newton’s Discoveries

Newton made discoveries in optics, motion and mathematics. Newton theorized that white light was a composite of all colors of the spectrum, and that light was composed of particles.

His momentous book on physics, Principia , contains information on nearly all of the essential concepts of physics except energy, ultimately helping him to explain the laws of motion and the theory of gravity. Along with mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, Newton is credited for developing essential theories of calculus.

Isaac Newton Inventions

Newton's first major public scientific achievement was designing and constructing a reflecting telescope in 1668. As a professor at Cambridge, Newton was required to deliver an annual course of lectures and chose optics as his initial topic. He used his telescope to study optics and help prove his theory of light and color.

The Royal Society asked for a demonstration of his reflecting telescope in 1671, and the organization's interest encouraged Newton to publish his notes on light, optics and color in 1672. These notes were later published as part of Newton's Opticks: Or, A treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections and Colours of Light .

The Apple Myth

Between 1665 and 1667, Newton returned home from Trinity College to pursue his private study, as school was closed due to the Great Plague. Legend has it that, at this time, Newton experienced his famous inspiration of gravity with the falling apple. According to this common myth, Newton was sitting under an apple tree when a fruit fell and hit him on the head, inspiring him to suddenly come up with the theory of gravity.

While there is no evidence that the apple actually hit Newton on the head, he did see an apple fall from a tree, leading him to wonder why it fell straight down and not at an angle. Consequently, he began exploring the theories of motion and gravity.

It was during this 18-month hiatus as a student that Newton conceived many of his most important insights—including the method of infinitesimal calculus, the foundations for his theory of light and color, and the laws of planetary motion—that eventually led to the publication of his physics book Principia and his theory of gravity.

Isaac Newton’s Laws of Motion

In 1687, following 18 months of intense and effectively nonstop work, Newton published Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy) , most often known as Principia .

Principia is said to be the single most influential book on physics and possibly all of science. Its publication immediately raised Newton to international prominence.

Principia offers an exact quantitative description of bodies in motion, with three basic but important laws of motion:

A stationary body will stay stationary unless an external force is applied to it.

Force is equal to mass times acceleration, and a change in motion (i.e., change in speed) is proportional to the force applied.

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Newton and the Theory of Gravity

Newton’s three basic laws of motion outlined in Principia helped him arrive at his theory of gravity. Newton’s law of universal gravitation states that two objects attract each other with a force of gravitational attraction that’s proportional to their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between their centers.

These laws helped explain not only elliptical planetary orbits but nearly every other motion in the universe: how the planets are kept in orbit by the pull of the sun’s gravity; how the moon revolves around Earth and the moons of Jupiter revolve around it; and how comets revolve in elliptical orbits around the sun.

They also allowed him to calculate the mass of each planet, calculate the flattening of the Earth at the poles and the bulge at the equator, and how the gravitational pull of the sun and moon create the Earth’s tides. In Newton's account, gravity kept the universe balanced, made it work, and brought heaven and Earth together in one great equation.

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Isaac Newton & Robert Hooke

Not everyone at the Royal Academy was enthusiastic about Newton’s discoveries in optics and 1672 publication of Opticks: Or, A treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections and Colours of Light . Among the dissenters was Robert Hooke , one of the original members of the Royal Academy and a scientist who was accomplished in a number of areas, including mechanics and optics.

While Newton theorized that light was composed of particles, Hooke believed it was composed of waves. Hooke quickly condemned Newton's paper in condescending terms, and attacked Newton's methodology and conclusions.

Hooke was not the only one to question Newton's work in optics. Renowned Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens and a number of French Jesuits also raised objections. But because of Hooke's association with the Royal Society and his own work in optics, his criticism stung Newton the worst.

Unable to handle the critique, he went into a rage—a reaction to criticism that was to continue throughout his life. Newton denied Hooke's charge that his theories had any shortcomings and argued the importance of his discoveries to all of science.

In the ensuing months, the exchange between the two men grew more acrimonious, and soon Newton threatened to quit the Royal Society altogether. He remained only when several other members assured him that the Fellows held him in high esteem.

The rivalry between Newton and Hooke would continue for several years thereafter. Then, in 1678, Newton suffered a complete nervous breakdown and the correspondence abruptly ended. The death of his mother the following year caused him to become even more isolated, and for six years he withdrew from intellectual exchange except when others initiated correspondence, which he always kept short.

During his hiatus from public life, Newton returned to his study of gravitation and its effects on the orbits of planets. Ironically, the impetus that put Newton on the right direction in this study came from Robert Hooke.

In a 1679 letter of general correspondence to Royal Society members for contributions, Hooke wrote to Newton and brought up the question of planetary motion, suggesting that a formula involving the inverse squares might explain the attraction between planets and the shape of their orbits.

Subsequent exchanges transpired before Newton quickly broke off the correspondence once again. But Hooke's idea was soon incorporated into Newton's work on planetary motion, and from his notes it appears he had quickly drawn his own conclusions by 1680, though he kept his discoveries to himself.

In early 1684, in a conversation with fellow Royal Society members Christopher Wren and Edmond Halley, Hooke made his case on the proof for planetary motion. Both Wren and Halley thought he was on to something, but pointed out that a mathematical demonstration was needed.

In August 1684, Halley traveled to Cambridge to visit with Newton, who was coming out of his seclusion. Halley idly asked him what shape the orbit of a planet would take if its attraction to the sun followed the inverse square of the distance between them (Hooke's theory).

Newton knew the answer, due to his concentrated work for the past six years, and replied, "An ellipse." Newton claimed to have solved the problem some 18 years prior, during his hiatus from Cambridge and the plague, but he was unable to find his notes. Halley persuaded him to work out the problem mathematically and offered to pay all costs so that the ideas might be published, which it was, in Newton’s Principia .

Upon the publication of the first edition of Principia in 1687, Robert Hooke immediately accused Newton of plagiarism, claiming that he had discovered the theory of inverse squares and that Newton had stolen his work. The charge was unfounded, as most scientists knew, for Hooke had only theorized on the idea and had never brought it to any level of proof.

Newton, however, was furious and strongly defended his discoveries. He withdrew all references to Hooke in his notes and threatened to withdraw from publishing the subsequent edition of Principia altogether.

Halley, who had invested much of himself in Newton's work, tried to make peace between the two men. While Newton begrudgingly agreed to insert a joint acknowledgment of Hooke's work (shared with Wren and Halley) in his discussion of the law of inverse squares, it did nothing to placate Hooke.

As the years went on, Hooke's life began to unravel. His beloved niece and companion died the same year that Principia was published, in 1687. As Newton's reputation and fame grew, Hooke's declined, causing him to become even more bitter and loathsome toward his rival.

To the very end, Hooke took every opportunity he could to offend Newton. Knowing that his rival would soon be elected president of the Royal Society, Hooke refused to retire until the year of his death, in 1703.

Newton and Alchemy

Following the publication of Principia , Newton was ready for a new direction in life. He no longer found contentment in his position at Cambridge and was becoming more involved in other issues.

He helped lead the resistance to King James II's attempts to reinstitute Catholic teaching at Cambridge, and in 1689 he was elected to represent Cambridge in Parliament.

While in London, Newton acquainted himself with a broader group of intellectuals and became acquainted with political philosopher John Locke . Though many of the scientists on the continent continued to teach the mechanical world according to Aristotle , a young generation of British scientists became captivated with Newton's new view of the physical world and recognized him as their leader.

One of these admirers was Nicolas Fatio de Duillier, a Swiss mathematician whom Newton befriended while in London.

However, within a few years, Newton fell into another nervous breakdown in 1693. The cause is open to speculation: his disappointment over not being appointed to a higher position by England's new monarchs, William III and Mary II, or the subsequent loss of his friendship with Duillier; exhaustion from being overworked; or perhaps chronic mercury poisoning after decades of alchemical research.

It's difficult to know the exact cause, but evidence suggests that letters written by Newton to several of his London acquaintances and friends, including Duillier, seemed deranged and paranoiac, and accused them of betrayal and conspiracy.

Oddly enough, Newton recovered quickly, wrote letters of apology to friends, and was back to work within a few months. He emerged with all his intellectual facilities intact, but seemed to have lost interest in scientific problems and now favored pursuing prophecy and scripture and the study of alchemy.

While some might see this as work beneath the man who had revolutionized science, it might be more properly attributed to Newton responding to the issues of the time in turbulent 17th century Britain.

Many intellectuals were grappling with the meaning of many different subjects, not least of which were religion, politics and the very purpose of life. Modern science was still so new that no one knew for sure how it measured up against older philosophies.

Gold Standard

In 1696, Newton was able to attain the governmental position he had long sought: warden of the Mint; after acquiring this new title, he permanently moved to London and lived with his niece, Catherine Barton.

Barton was the mistress of Lord Halifax, a high-ranking government official who was instrumental in having Newton promoted, in 1699, to master of the Mint—a position that he would hold until his death.

Not wanting it to be considered a mere honorary position, Newton approached the job in earnest, reforming the currency and severely punishing counterfeiters. As master of the Mint, Newton moved the British currency, the pound sterling, from the silver to the gold standard.

The Royal Society

In 1703, Newton was elected president of the Royal Society upon Robert Hooke's death. However, Newton never seemed to understand the notion of science as a cooperative venture, and his ambition and fierce defense of his own discoveries continued to lead him from one conflict to another with other scientists.

By most accounts, Newton's tenure at the society was tyrannical and autocratic; he was able to control the lives and careers of younger scientists with absolute power.

In 1705, in a controversy that had been brewing for several years, German mathematician Gottfried Leibniz publicly accused Newton of plagiarizing his research, claiming he had discovered infinitesimal calculus several years before the publication of Principia .

In 1712, the Royal Society appointed a committee to investigate the matter. Of course, since Newton was president of the society, he was able to appoint the committee's members and oversee its investigation. Not surprisingly, the committee concluded Newton's priority over the discovery.

That same year, in another of Newton's more flagrant episodes of tyranny, he published without permission the notes of astronomer John Flamsteed. It seems the astronomer had collected a massive body of data from his years at the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, England.

Newton had requested a large volume of Flamsteed's notes for his revisions to Principia . Annoyed when Flamsteed wouldn't provide him with more information as quickly as he wanted it, Newton used his influence as president of the Royal Society to be named the chairman of the body of "visitors" responsible for the Royal Observatory.

He then tried to force the immediate publication of Flamsteed's catalogue of the stars, as well as all of Flamsteed's notes, edited and unedited. To add insult to injury, Newton arranged for Flamsteed's mortal enemy, Edmund Halley, to prepare the notes for press.

Flamsteed was finally able to get a court order forcing Newton to cease his plans for publication and return the notes—one of the few times that Newton was bested by one of his rivals.

Final Years

Toward the end of this life, Newton lived at Cranbury Park, near Winchester, England, with his niece, Catherine (Barton) Conduitt, and her husband, John Conduitt.

By this time, Newton had become one of the most famous men in Europe. His scientific discoveries were unchallenged. He also had become wealthy, investing his sizable income wisely and bestowing sizable gifts to charity.

Despite his fame, Newton's life was far from perfect: He never married or made many friends, and in his later years, a combination of pride, insecurity and side trips on peculiar scientific inquiries led even some of his few friends to worry about his mental stability.

By the time he reached 80 years of age, Newton was experiencing digestion problems and had to drastically change his diet and mobility.

In March 1727, Newton experienced severe pain in his abdomen and blacked out, never to regain consciousness. He died the next day, on March 31, 1727, at the age of 84.

Newton's fame grew even more after his death, as many of his contemporaries proclaimed him the greatest genius who ever lived. Maybe a slight exaggeration, but his discoveries had a large impact on Western thought, leading to comparisons to the likes of Plato , Aristotle and Galileo.

Although his discoveries were among many made during the Scientific Revolution, Newton's universal principles of gravity found no parallels in science at the time.

Of course, Newton was proven wrong on some of his key assumptions. In the 20th century, Albert Einstein would overturn Newton's concept of the universe, stating that space, distance and motion were not absolute but relative and that the universe was more fantastic than Newton had ever conceived.

Newton might not have been surprised: In his later life, when asked for an assessment of his achievements, he replied, "I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself now and then in finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me."

QUICK FACTS

• Name: Isaac Newton
• Birth Year: 1643
• Birth date: January 4, 1643
• Birth City: Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England
• Birth Country: United Kingdom
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: Isaac Newton was an English physicist and mathematician famous for his laws of physics. He was a key figure in the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century.
• Science and Medicine
• Technology and Engineering
• Education and Academia
• Astrological Sign: Capricorn
• University of Cambridge, Trinity College
• The King's School
• Interesting Facts
• Isaac Newton helped develop the principles of modern physics, including the laws of motion, and is credited as one of the great minds of the 17th-century Scientific Revolution.
• In 1687, Newton published his most acclaimed work, 'Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica' ('Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy'), which has been called the single most influential book on physics.
• Newton's theory of gravity states that two objects attract each other with a force of gravitational attraction that’s proportional to their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between their centers.
• Death Year: 1727
• Death date: March 31, 1727
• Death City: London, England
• Death Country: United Kingdom

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CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: Isaac Newton Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/scientists/isaac-newton
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: November 5, 2020
• Original Published Date: April 3, 2014
• I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself now and then in finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
• Plato is my friend, Aristotle is my friend, but my greatest friend is truth.
• If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.
• It is the perfection of God's works that they are all done with the greatest simplicity.
• Every body continues in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a right line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed upon it.
• To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction: or, the mutual actions of two bodies upon each other are always equal, and directed to contrary parts.
• I see I have made myself a slave to philosophy.
• The changing of bodies into light, and light into bodies, is very conformable to the course of nature, which seems delighted with transmutations.
• To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age. Tis much better to do a little with certainty and leave the rest for others that come after, then to explain all things by conjecture without making sure of any thing.
• Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.
• Atheism is so senseless and odious to mankind that it never had many professors.
• Newton was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians, the last of the Babylonians and Sumerians, the last great mind that looked out on the visible and intellectual world with the same eyes as those who began to build our intellectual inheritance rather less than 10,000 years ago.

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Isaac Newton

By: History.com Editors

Updated: October 16, 2023 | Original: March 10, 2015

Isaac Newton is best know for his theory about the law of gravity, but his “Principia Mathematica” (1686) with its three laws of motion greatly influenced the Enlightenment in Europe. Born in 1643 in Woolsthorpe, England, Sir Isaac Newton began developing his theories on light, calculus and celestial mechanics while on break from Cambridge University. 

Years of research culminated with the 1687 publication of “Principia,” a landmark work that established the universal laws of motion and gravity. Newton’s second major book, “Opticks,” detailed his experiments to determine the properties of light. Also a student of Biblical history and alchemy, the famed scientist served as president of the Royal Society of London and master of England’s Royal Mint until his death in 1727.

Isaac Newton: Early Life and Education

Isaac Newton was born on January 4, 1643, in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England. The son of a farmer who died three months before he was born, Newton spent most of his early years with his maternal grandmother after his mother remarried. His education was interrupted by a failed attempt to turn him into a farmer, and he attended the King’s School in Grantham before enrolling at the University of Cambridge’s Trinity College in 1661.

Newton studied a classical curriculum at Cambridge, but he became fascinated by the works of modern philosophers such as René Descartes, even devoting a set of notes to his outside readings he titled “Quaestiones Quaedam Philosophicae” (“Certain Philosophical Questions”). When the Great Plague shuttered Cambridge in 1665, Newton returned home and began formulating his theories on calculus, light and color, his farm the setting for the supposed falling apple that inspired his work on gravity.

Isaac Newton’s Telescope and Studies on Light

Newton returned to Cambridge in 1667 and was elected a minor fellow. He constructed the first reflecting telescope in 1668, and the following year he received his Master of Arts degree and took over as Cambridge’s Lucasian Professor of Mathematics. Asked to give a demonstration of his telescope to the Royal Society of London in 1671, he was elected to the Royal Society the following year and published his notes on optics for his peers.

Through his experiments with refraction, Newton determined that white light was a composite of all the colors on the spectrum, and he asserted that light was composed of particles instead of waves. His methods drew sharp rebuke from established Society member Robert Hooke, who was unsparing again with Newton’s follow-up paper in 1675. 

Known for his temperamental defense of his work, Newton engaged in heated correspondence with Hooke before suffering a nervous breakdown and withdrawing from the public eye in 1678. In the following years, he returned to his earlier studies on the forces governing gravity and dabbled in alchemy.

Isaac Newton and the Law of Gravity

In 1684, English astronomer Edmund Halley paid a visit to the secluded Newton. Upon learning that Newton had mathematically worked out the elliptical paths of celestial bodies, Halley urged him to organize his notes. 

The result was the 1687 publication of “Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica” (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy), which established the three laws of motion and the law of universal gravity. Newton’s three laws of motion state that (1) Every object in a state of uniform motion will remain in that state of motion unless an external force acts on it; (2) Force equals mass times acceleration: F=MA and (3) For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

“Principia” propelled Newton to stardom in intellectual circles, eventually earning universal acclaim as one of the most important works of modern science. His work was a foundational part of the European Enlightenment .

With his newfound influence, Newton opposed the attempts of King James II to reinstitute Catholic teachings at English Universities. King James II was replaced by his protestant daughter Mary and her husband William of Orange as part of the Glorious Revolution of 1688, and Newton was elected to represent Cambridge in Parliament in 1689. 

Newton moved to London permanently after being named warden of the Royal Mint in 1696, earning a promotion to master of the Mint three years later. Determined to prove his position wasn’t merely symbolic, Newton moved the pound sterling from the silver to the gold standard and sought to punish counterfeiters.

The death of Hooke in 1703 allowed Newton to take over as president of the Royal Society, and the following year he published his second major work, “Opticks.” Composed largely from his earlier notes on the subject, the book detailed Newton’s painstaking experiments with refraction and the color spectrum, closing with his ruminations on such matters as energy and electricity. In 1705, he was knighted by Queen Anne of England.

Isaac Newton: Founder of Calculus?

Around this time, the debate over Newton’s claims to originating the field of calculus exploded into a nasty dispute. Newton had developed his concept of “fluxions” (differentials) in the mid 1660s to account for celestial orbits, though there was no public record of his work. 

In the meantime, German mathematician Gottfried Leibniz formulated his own mathematical theories and published them in 1684. As president of the Royal Society, Newton oversaw an investigation that ruled his work to be the founding basis of the field, but the debate continued even after Leibniz’s death in 1716. Researchers later concluded that both men likely arrived at their conclusions independent of one another.

Death of Isaac Newton

Newton was also an ardent student of history and religious doctrines, and his writings on those subjects were compiled into multiple books that were published posthumously. Having never married, Newton spent his later years living with his niece at Cranbury Park near Winchester, England. He died in his sleep on March 31, 1727, and was buried in Westminster Abbey .

A giant even among the brilliant minds that drove the Scientific Revolution, Newton is remembered as a transformative scholar, inventor and writer. He eradicated any doubts about the heliocentric model of the universe by establishing celestial mechanics, his precise methodology giving birth to what is known as the scientific method. Although his theories of space-time and gravity eventually gave way to those of Albert Einstein , his work remains the bedrock on which modern physics was built.

Isaac Newton Quotes

• “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.”
• “I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies but not the madness of people.”
• “What we know is a drop, what we don't know is an ocean.”
• “Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who sets the planets in motion.”
• “No great discovery was ever made without a bold guess.”

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Isaac Newton

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Isaac Newton (1642-1727) was an English mathematician and physicist widely regarded as the single most important figure in the Scientific Revolution for his three laws of motion and universal law of gravity. Newton's laws became a fundamental foundation of physics, while his discovery that white light is made up of a rainbow of colours revolutionised the field of optics.

Isaac Newton was born on 25 December 1642. His family in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, was of the yeomanry class, but it was clear that Isaac was destined for a career other than farming. Isaac's father died a few months before he was born, and his stepfather, a minister, died when he was 14. His mother was Hannah Ayscough, and her second husband insisted that Isaac be separated from his mother for a number of years. Some historians have read into this period of neglect the cause of Newton's notoriously prickly character and hypersensitivity to criticism later in life.

The young Isaac had a prodigious interest in all things mechanical, and he made several working models of his own, but he did not do particularly well at school. He was mischievous and once sent out into the night sky a series of candle-lit lanterns, which startled the local villagers into thinking a shower of comets was about to strike them down. An uncle of Isaac was adamant he was sent to study law at Trinity College, Cambridge, in June 1661. It was not law, though, but mathematics at which the young scholar excelled.

Isaac supplemented his orthodox education by taking private lessons with the mathematician and theologian Isaac Barrow (1630-1677). Barrow would later recommend Newton for his own soon-to-be-vacant chair at Trinity College. Newton graduated in April 1665, but any hope of a quick career launch was scuppered when there was an outbreak of the Black Death plague . Isaac was obliged to return to the family home in Woolthorpe for a year or more.

Newton's Approach to Knowledge

Isaac did not waste his year of forced seclusion as he launched into a series of scientific investigations, so much so that he described 1665 to 1666 as his "year of wonder" (Burns, 217). Newton discovered "the binomial theory, the differential and integral calculus, and the refraction of light, and he began to work out the theory of universal gravitation" ( ibid ). Heady stuff. Newton was determined to use all manner of methodologies and thinking, from alchemy to mechanical philosophy , in order to find out scientific truths that can be expressed mathematically. To this end, he relentlessly squirrelled away kernels of ancient and contemporary knowledge, experimentation, and even lore in a few select and very private leather-bound volumes, thus preserving his findings for later consumption when his scientific theories became clearer. As Newton himself once stated in a private letter, "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants" (Wootton, 341).

Newton was also a Protestant Christian (although an unorthodox one in private) and saw no conflict in his endeavours to explain why things happened the way they do in the physical world with the story of the Bible . Indeed, the imperfections of the physical world his theories proved all required, Newton said, a Creator to adjust them every now and then. Some Christians saw this as denying the perfection of the Creator, others saw it as support for having a Creator in the first place. For Newton, space was "an eminent effect of God ," and "he seems to have gone so far as to later identify space with the immensity of God, so that the biblical pronouncements that 'In Him we live, and move, and have our being' (Acts 17:28) was taken quite literally" (Henry, 89).

Like many thinkers of the time, Newton was convinced that great knowledge had been gained and then lost over the centuries and so careful research of past intellectual endeavours was essential in order to recapture this lost wisdom (known as prisca sapientia ). This belief in a lost or secret knowledge – a peculiar eccentricity for a scientist – may also explain why Newton was notoriously reticent to publish his own discoveries. He seemed to relish secrecy, just as was the tradition of the great alchemists of the Middle Ages. Fortunately for the progress of humanity, Newton did eventually make his ground-breaking research public.

Newton's Spectrum of Light

Newton did not find the esteemed Royal Society very receptive to his new ideas, particularly on optics, and so he got his foot in the door of that institution by designing a reflective telescope in 1668. This type of telescope used a curved mirror made of a tin and copper alloy, which improved the clarity of the image seen by reducing chromatic aberration, that is, when all colours fail to converge in a single point (a problem of glass lenses at the time). Newton's telescope had a magnification of 40 times and was ten times shorter than the standard refracting telescope of the same strength would have been. The Royal Society was hooked, and Newton was elected to that learned body in 1672; he then submitted his research on optics, which had, in fact, made his super-duper telescope possible.

Between 1666 and 1668, Newton had conducted optical experiments where he captured a narrow beam of light through an aperture, which was then projected onto a wall in a dark room. The light was made to shine through a prism. Others had done this sort of thing before, but, significantly, Newton put his prism near the hole and far from the wall on which was projected a block of rainbow colours: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. Even more crucial – in what he called his experimentum crucis – Newton then had various colour beams of the split white light go through a second prism, and these left that second prism the same colour as they entered, i.e. they could not be split further. Newton was thus able to develop a new theory of light, which was that white light is made up of a spectrum of different colours, each with a different angle of refraction, just like a rainbow one could see in the sky after a shower of rain. In the rainbow in the sky, drops of water function as a prism, that is, the white light is refracted. Newton also discovered that in the tiny airspace between a lens and a sheet of glass, coloured concentric rings can be seen, and these are now called Newton's rings.

Newton's idea of heterogeneous light, published in Philosophical Transactions in 1672, went directly against the standard theory of the time, which was the inverse of Newton's. Champions of the standard theory included Robert Hooke (1635-1703), who dismissed Newton's theory and later even accused him of plagiarism (without foundation). Newton, who was "of somewhat paranoid temperament" (Burns, 73) and "socially dysfunctional" (Jardine, 36), promptly withdrew from the Royal Society and would not even accept its presidency until Hooke had departed this earth. In 1704, Newton finally published his work on light in detail in his Optics . It took some time for Newton's theory to become widely accepted, but it is now a cornerstone of the science of optics.

Newton's Law of Gravity

The German astronomer Johannes Kepler created the most accurate yet system of planetary astronomy, with the heavenly bodies moving in elliptical orbits around the Sun and not the traditional model of perfect circles as proposed by thinkers from Claudius Ptolemy (c. 100 to c. 170) to Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543). The discovery that the planets increased their speed as they drew closer to the Sun was essential for Newton to build his own work upon. Newton's law of gravity would provide the cause for Kepler's keen observations of elliptical planetary motions. Encouraged, both with words and money, by his good friend Edmund Halley (1656-1742), Newton finally presented his theory of gravity in Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy ( Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica ), published in 1687.

The effects of gravity have been known since antiquity. Ancient thinkers formed theories as to why objects fell to the ground, the most common being that this was because Earth was the very centre of the universe and so some mysterious force attracted all objects to the central point. Similarly, thinkers like Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) had pondered what kind of force was responsible for the Sun seemingly pulling orbiting planets more speedily to its centre the closer they got to it. Magnetism was often suggested as the answer, but many thinkers remained unconvinced.

An apple may not have actually fallen from a branch and hit Newton on the head, but it does seem that his observation of fruit falling set him pondering what force was involved and how to measure it. Newton had also noticed many other 'attractions' and 'repulsions' between many other objects and substances, and so he began to formulate a theory that could measure such phenomena and finally bring together (or at least reconcile) two ancient but often opposing strands of human thought: mechanics and mathematics.

In his Principia , Newton put forward his theory of universal gravitation, but first, he presented a system of mathematical laws, which became known as 'Newton's laws of motion', here summarised by W. E. Burns:

That there is an attractive force between bodies that varies with the inverse square of the distance between them – and Newton's three laws of motion – 1. a body at rest or in motion in a straight path will tend to stay in that state, 2. a change of motion in a body varies with the force impressed, and 3. each action has an equal and opposite reaction. (218)

Newton then presented his theory of gravity:

That between any two bodies in the universe there exists a force directly proportional to the product of the masses of the two bodies and inversely proportional to the square of their distance. (Burns, 245)

Newton's theory of gravity was universal because it applied to everything from spinning planets to the movement of comets to the tides of the sea to that apocryphal apple dropping from a tree. The law of gravity (actually called a 'law' by Newton only in his later Optics ) applied equally to terrestrial affairs and to the heavens. Newton could now make accurate predictions of the effects of gravity. This was a new science. Of course, not everyone immediately adopted Newton's theories. The mechanical philosophers and the Cartesian followers of René Descartes (1596-1650), for example, could not accept that one physical body can affect another body without something, a third element, touching the two. Put simply, gravity was rather mysterious, since nobody, not even Newton, knew where it came from, why it exists, and who or what ensures its persistence. Contemplation on this fact and the inference that these forces act without any consideration of humanity led in some ways to a disenchantment regarding a new and pitiless world, at least for those who did not believe that a god of some kind was behind it all.

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Recognition: The Greatest Scientist

Newton's work on gravity was ultimately well received, particularly in England , and he was made a fellow of Trinity College in 1687. Two years later, Newton became the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics there. A circle of devoted international followers sprang up around Newton, including the Swiss mathematician Nicolas Fatio de Duillier (1664-1753), who became very close to him. From 1688, Newton became ambitious to forge a political career. The scientist had hoped to move to London but suffered a nervous breakdown in 1693, perhaps because of the end of his relationship with Fatio de Duillier but certainly made worse by his chronic insomnia and possibly even a consequence of mercury poisoning, a key ingredient of Newton's experiments in alchemy. Recovered by 1696, Newton was made the warden of the royal mint in the Tower of London , which carried with it both prestige and a handsome salary. Newton, taking a hands-on approach which had not been required for what was, in effect, an honorary position, impressed his employers so much that he was made the mint master in 1699. He performed the role with remarkable dedication for the next 28 years, much to the chagrin of the countless counterfeiters he identified (who were then invariably hanged).

It was also in 1699 that Newton was appointed a member of the French Royal Academy of Sciences, the first foreigner to gain entry. In 1703, he was elected President of the Royal Society, and he used his position to skew the society's endeavours much more towards practical experimentation (as opposed to merely reading the academic papers of others) throughout his tenure, which ended in 1727. Less admirable was his ongoing feud with the German mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz , which significantly held back mathematics in Britain . Newton accused Leibniz of plagiarising his work on the calculus (a mathematical tool for calculating curves and their areas). In reality, both men had developed the calculus independently, and although most historians consider Newton to have got there first, Leibniz's version was superior. Newton was knighted by Anne, Queen of Great Britain (r. 1702-1714) in 1705, probably more for his service in the royal mint than his tremendous contribution to science, but, nevertheless, it was a memorable moment for all scientists past and present since he was the first to be so honoured.

Death & Legacy

Newton was famous in his own lifetime for his discoveries, as we have seen with his various appointments to prestigious institutions at home and abroad. Rather oddly for a man so associated with science, Newton spent his final years studying biblical prophecies, an area he believed was just as valid as scientific experimentation. Sir Isaac Newton died of kidney failure on 20 March 1727; he was 84 years old. He had never married and left no children. Newton was given a state funeral and buried in Westminster Abbey. Alexander Pope provided the memorable epitaph:

Nature and Nature's Laws lay hid by Night: GOD said, Let Newton be! And all was Light. (Wootton, 361)

Newton, in one of those statements he frequently made where one wonders if he is being genuinely modest, remarked upon his career and discoveries in the following terms:

I don't know what I may seem to the world but, as to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me. (Gleick, 4)

There would be many more breakthroughs in science after Newton, but nothing as revolutionary as his work until the development in the 20th century of relativity and quantum physics.

There developed a definite movement, known as Newtonianism, which pushed the idea that scientific knowledge should be presented as a series of mathematical laws which could predict tendencies of motion in relation to hypothetical accelerative forces. In addition, because Newton's research was so complex and inaccessible to the majority, a great number of writers sprang up who simplified Newton's work so that it could be understood by the reasonably well-educated. Newtonianism gradually spread across Europe to become the dominant approach in universities and amongst intellectuals. Newton's approach to knowledge, spread to new minds by such thinkers as Voltaire (1694-1778) in his Elements of Newton's Philosophy (1738), was an important part of the Enlightenment movement, where the improvement of the human condition became the ultimate goal of philosophy and science, despite Newton having split those two disciplines apart forever. Even that great modern genius Albert Einstein (1879-1955), with his new theory of relativity, could not overthrow Newtonianism but only extend it to new and bold horizons. As Einstein once said of Newton: "He stands before us strong, certain, and alone" (Gleick, 9).

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Bibliography

• Burns, William E. The Scientific Revolution in Global Perspective. Oxford University Press, 2015.
• Burns, William E. The Scientific Revolution. ABC-CLIO, 2001.
• Bynum, William F. & Browne, Janet & Porter, Roy. Dictionary of the History of Science . Princeton University Press, 1982.
• Gleick, James. Isaac Newton. Vintage Books, 2023.
• Henry. The Scientific Revolution and the Origins of Modern Science . Red Globe Press, 2008.
• Jardine, Lisa. Ingenious Pursuits. Anchor, 2000.
• Moran, Bruce T. Distilling Knowledge. Harvard University Press, 2005.
• Wootton, David. The Invention of Science. Penguin UK, 2023.

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Cartwright, Mark. " Isaac Newton ." World History Encyclopedia . Last modified September 19, 2023. https://www.worldhistory.org/Isaac_Newton/.

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Isaac Newton, like Albert Einstein, is a quintessential symbol of the human intellect and its ability to decode the secrets of nature. Newton's fundamental contributions to science include the quantification of gravitational attraction, the discovery that white light is actually a mixture of immutable spectral colors, and the formulation of the calculus. Yet there is another, more mysterious side to Newton that is imperfectly known, a realm of activity that spanned some thirty years of his life, although he kept it largely hidden from his contemporaries and colleagues. We refer to Newton's involvement in the discipline of alchemy, or as it was often called in seventeenth-century England, "chymistry." Newton wrote and transcribed about a million words on the subject of alchemy. Newton's alchemical manuscripts include a rich and diverse set of document types, including laboratory notebooks, indices of alchemical substances, and Newton's transcriptions from other sources.

Newton & Alchemy

It is important to see how chemical technology and medicine were connected to Newton's involvement to the "Great Work," just as it is important to see how his chymistry was related to his other intellectual and technical pursuits. Newton & Alchemy

Latent Semantic Analysis

Computational tools to aid analysis of the language and projects encompassed in Newton's alchemical manuscripts. Latent Semantic Analysis

Featured Presentation

William R. Newman presented a lecture titled Why did Isaac Newton Believe in Alchemy? at the The Perimeter Institute on October 2, 2010. Project Presentations

Alchemy and Optics

Experiments in Mineral Acids

Newton describes the production of the spirit of salt (hydrochloric acid) in Don b. 15, p.8v , as follows: "Spirit of Salt. Common salt, beat fine in 1 part brick-dust or potters earth not over dryed & pouder 5 parts : urge by a graduall fire out of a glass retort filld full into a large receiver till you feel the receiver cold & one pound will yeild nine or 10 ounces."

Multimedia Lab

In Newton's day, a silica garden was usually made by placing lumps of ferric chloride in a solution of potassium silicate. Silica gardens encouraged the idea that minerals were vegetative. See videos demonstrating this process and five other reactions that shaped the thinking of early modern chymists on our Multimedia Lab page.

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• Scientific Methods
• Famous Physicists
• Isaac Newton

Sir Isaac Newton

Apart from discovering the cause of the fall of an apple from a tree, that is, the laws of gravity, Sir Isaac Newton was perhaps one of the most brilliant and greatest physicists of all time. He shaped dramatic and surprising discoveries in the laws of physics that we believe our universe obeys, and hence it changed the way we appreciate and relate to the world around us.

Table of Contents

About sir isaac newton, sir isaac newton’s education, awards and achievements, some achievements of isaac newton in brief.

• Universal Law of Gravitation

Optics and Light

Sir Isaac Newton was born on 4th January 1643 in a small village of England called Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth. He was an English physicist and mathematician, and one of the important thinkers in the Scientific Revolution.

He discovered the phenomenon of white light integrated with colours which further laid the foundation of modern physical optics. His famous three laws of Motion in mechanics and the formulation of the laws of gravitation completely changed the track of physics across the globe. He was the originator of calculus in mathematics. A scientist like him is considered an excellent gift by nature to the world of physics.

Isaac Newton studied at the Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1661. At 22 in 1665, a year after beginning his four-year scholarship, Newton finished his first significant discovery in mathematics, where he revealed the generalized binomial theorem. He was bestowed with his B.A. degree in the same year.

Isaac Newton held numerous positions throughout his life. In 1671, he was invited to join the Royal Society of London after developing a new and enhanced version of the reflecting telescope.

He was later elected President of the Royal Society (1703). Sir Isaac Newton ran for a seat in Parliament in 1689. He won the election and became a Member of Parliament for Cambridge University. He was also appointed as a Warden of the Mint in 1969. Due to his exemplary work and dedication to the mint, he was chosen Master of the Mint in 1700. After being knighted in 1705, he was known as “Sir Isaac Newton.”

His mind was ablaze with original ideas. He made significant progress in three distinct fields – with some of the most profound discoveries in:

• Calculus, the mathematics of change, which is vital to our understanding of the world around us
• Optics and the behaviour of light
• He also built the first working reflecting telescope
• He showed that Kepler’s laws of planetary motion are exceptional cases of Newton’s universal gravitation.

Sir Isaac Newton’s Contribution in Calculus

Sir Isaac Newton was the first individual to develop calculus. Modern physics and physical chemistry are almost impossible without calculus, as it is the mathematics of change.

The idea of differentiating calculus into differential calculus, integral calculus and differential equations came from Newton’s fertile mind. Today, most mathematicians give equal credit to Newton and Leibniz for calculus’s discovery.

Law of Universal Gravitation

The famous apple that he saw falling from a tree led him to discover the force of gravitation and its laws. Ultimately, he realised that the pressure causing the apple’s fall is responsible for the moon to orbit the earth, as well as comets and other planets to revolve around the sun. The force can be felt throughout the universe. Hence, Newton called it the Universal Law of Gravitation .

Newton discovered the equation that allows us to compute the force of gravity between two objects.

Newton’s Laws of Motion

• First law of Motion
• Second Law of Motion
• Third law of Motion

Watch the video and learn about the history of the concept of Gravitation

Sir Isaac Newton also accomplished himself in experimental methods and working with equipment. He built the world’s first reflecting telescope . This telescope focuses all the light from a curved mirror. Here are some advantages of reflecting telescopes from optics and light –

• They are inexpensive to make.
• They are easier to make in large sizes, gathering lighter, allowing advanced magnification.
• They don’t suffer focusing issues linked with lenses called chromatic aberration.

Isaac Newton also proved that white light is not a simple phenomenon with the help of a glass prism. He confirmed that it is made up of all of the colours of the rainbow, which could recombine to form white light again.

Watch the video and solve complete NCERT exercise questions in the chapter Gravitation

Frequently Asked Questions

How did newton discover gravity.

Seeing an apple fall from the tree made him think about the forces of nature.

What is Calculus in Mathematics?

Calculus is the study of differentiation and integration. Calculus explains the changes in values, on a small and large scale, related to any function.

Define Reflecting Telescope.

It’s a telescope invented by Newton that uses mirrors to collect and focus the light towards the eyepiece.

Name all the Kepler’s Laws of planetary motion.

Kepler’s three laws of planetary motion are:

• The Law of Ellipses
• The Law of Equal Areas
• The Law of Harmonies

Who discovered Gravity?

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Sir Isaac Newton, a towering figure in the annals of science, left an indelible mark on human understanding with his groundbreaking work. Best known for his monumental work "Philosophiae" Naturalis Principia Mathematica, or the Principia, Newton's contributions spanned physics, mathematics, and astronomy. His biography tells the story of an insatiably curious mind whose relentless pursuit of knowledge reshaped these fields. Our Sir Isaac Newton PowerPoint provides a dynamic platform for presenting Newton's life, work, and enduring impact. Ideal for educators, researchers, students, and history enthusiasts, it simplifies complex scientific concepts through engaging visuals and design. Customizable slides ensure seamless integration into presentations, saving time and effort. Embrace this template to inspire a deeper appreciation for Scientist Sir Isaac Newton's legacy and the wonders of science.

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Sir Isaac Newton - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Sir Isaac Newton

Sir isaac newton life and accomplishments group 4 octavio aguilera juan aldana alex serna table of contents the beginning of his life early life reflecting telescope ... – powerpoint ppt presentation.

• Life and Accomplishments
• Octavio Aguilera
• Juan Aldana
• The Beginning of His Life
• Reflecting Telescope
• Motion and Gravity
• First Law of Motion
• Second Law of Motion
• Third Law of Motion
• Principia and Opticks
• A Great Man
• Born on January 4, 1643
• In Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England
• Where he was raised by his Grandmother
• Newton received a bachelors degree at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1665
• The next two years Newton returned home where he came up with most of his discoveries.
• He returned to Trinity College in 1667, where he became a professor of mathematics in 1669.
• In 1668 Newton made the first reflecting telescope
• Light is collected and refracted from a curved mirror
• Far superior from refracting telescopes because the image did not become blurry
• Newton invented Calculus in 1669, but didnt publish his work until 1704
• Calculus is divided into two parts Differential and Integral Calculus
• Differential Calculus Deals with the change in rate of objects
• Integral Calculus Deals with measuring quantities and dividing into smaller ones
• Newton wondered why objects fell to earth while sitting under an apple tree he saw an apple fall in front of him
• Although many believe this story is untrue
• That is when Newton came up with the three laws of motion
• A body continues in a state of rest in a straight line if it is not acted upon by forces.
• When a force acts on a body it produces an acceleration, which is proportional to the magnitude of the force
• If body A exerts a force on body B, body B always exerts an equal and opposite force on body A
• Newton believed that when an object goes around another there are two balanced forces.
• Centripetal force pulls the revolving object towards the pivoting point
• Centrifugal force pulls the object away from pivoting point
• Newton showed that comets acted upon by the same forces as the planets
• Proved when Edmund Halley predicted the next time a comet would pass by again
• Newton summarized his discoveries in Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica (mathematical principles of natural philosophy) (1687)
• It shows his principle of universal gravitation and provided an explanation both of falling bodies on the Earth and of the motions of planets, comets and other bodies of the universe.
• Opticks (1704) presented his discoveries of light and elaborated his theory that light is composed of corpuscles, or particles.
• Isaac Newton died on March 31, 1727 in London, England
• Isaac Newton (The Last Sorcerer), by Michael White
• Encyclopedia Article
• The New Encyclopedia Britannica Volume 8. Micropaedia/Ready Reference pg. 663
• A source of scientific period
• The Scientists of The Scientific Revolution pg. 69-87
• Internet source
• Newton, Isaac. The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001 _at_ www. Bartleby.com

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Special Presentations

Academic Articles

• John A. Walsh and Wallace Edd Hooper, "The Liberty of Invention: Alchemical Discourse and Information Technology Standardization," Literary and Linguistic Computing 27 (2012), 55–79.
• William R. Newman, "Newton's Early Optical Theory and its Debt to Chymistry," in Lumière et vision dans les sciences et dans les arts. De l'Antiquité au XVIIe siècle , ed. Danielle Jacquart and Michel Hochmann (Geneva: Droz, 2010), 283–307.
• William R. Newman, "Geochemical Concepts in Isaac Newton's Early Alchemy," in The Revolution in Geology from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment , ed. Gary D. Rosenberg (Boulder: Geological Society of America, 2009), 41–49.
• William R. Newman, "Newton's Theory of Metallic Generation in the Previously Neglected Text 'Humores minerales continuo decidunt'," in Chymists and Chymistry: Studies in the History of Alchemy and Early Modern Chemistry , ed. Lawrence M. Principe (Sagamore Beach, MA: Chemical Heritage Foundation and Science History Publications, 2007), 89–100.
• Cesare Pastorino, Tamara Lopez and John A. Walsh, "The Digital Index Chemicus: toward a digital tool for studying Isaac Newton's Index Chemicus," Body, Space & Technology Journal 7.20 (2008) < http://people.brunel.ac.uk/bst/vol0702/cesarepastorino/ >.

Presentations and Lectures

• William R. Newman, "Unsolved Mysteries of Newton's Alchemy," "A great variety of admirable discoverys": Newton's Principia in the Age of Enlightenment, The Royal Society, London, UK, December 11–13, 2013.
• William R. Newman, "Newton's Reputation as an Alchemist and the Tradition of Chymiatria," The Reception of Newton: International Conference at the Edward Worth Library, Dublin, July 12–13, 2012.
• William R. Newman, "Isaac Newton and Chymical Medicine," Alchemy and Medicine from Antiquity to the Enlightenment, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK, September 22–24, 2011.
• John A. Walsh and Wallace Edd Hooper, "Computational Discovery and Visualization of Semantic Structures in Historical and Literary Corpora: The Chymistry of Isaac Newton & The Algernon Charles Swinburne Project" (poster), Digital Humanities 2011, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, June 19–22, 2011 < http://www.slis.indiana.edu/faculty/jawalsh/posters/computational_discovery_and_vis.pdf >.
• William R. Newman, "The Chymistry of Isaac Newton Project as an Example of Work in Digital Humanities" (with Wally Hooper), Digital HPS Workshop, Caltech, Pasadena, CA, April 14–17, 2011.
• William R. Newman, "Chymistry in Isaac Newton's Early Theory of Light and Color," (invited lecture), McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, April 6, 2010.
• William R. Newman, "Chemistry and Optics, " Newton:Milton, Two Cultures?, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK, July 20–24, 2009
• Wallace Edd Hooper and Timothy D. Bowman, "Isaac Newton's alchemical symbols," Digital Library Brownbag Series, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, March 25, 2009.
• Stacy T. Kowalczyk, John A. Walsh, Timothy D. Bowman and Jon. W. Dunn, "Digital humanities annotation," Institute for Digital Arts and Humanities Brownbag Series, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, February 5, 2009.
• William R. Newman, "Art and Nature in the Alchemical Work of Isaac Newton," (invited lecture), University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 2009.
• William R. Newman, "Newton's Chymistry," (invited lecture), University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, 2009.
• John A. Walsh and Tamara Lopez, "The 'Chymistry' of Isaac Newton," Digital Library Brownbag Series, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, February 8, 2006.
• John A. Walsh, "The Chymistry of Isaac Newton: New Technologies and Old Science" (poster), Digital Resources for the Humanities (DRH), Lancaster University, Lancaster, England, UK, September 4–7, 2005.
• William R. Newman et. al., "The Chymistry of Isaac Newton" (invited talk), Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) Scholarly Communication Institute, University of Virginia, Charlotesville, VA, July 17–19, 2005.
• John A. Walsh "The Chymistry of Isaac Newton: New Technologies and Old Science" (poster), Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Science and Technology Section (STS), American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference, McCormick Place Convention Center, Chicago, IL, June 23–25, 2005.
• William R. Newman, "Alchemy and Optics in the work of Isaac Newton" (invited lecture), Lumière et vision dans les sciences et dans les arts. De l'Antiquité au XVIIe siècle, Institut National d'Histoire de l'Art, Paris, June 9–11, 2005.
• William R. Newman, "Theology in the Laboratory? New Light on Isaac Newton's Alchemy" (invited lecture), History and Philosophy of Science and Technology Colloquium Series, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, May 5, 2004.
• William R. Newman, "Newton's Alchemy, The Tabula Smaragdina, and the Aerial Niter" (invited lecture), The Magic of Things. A workshop held at Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, April 11–12, 2003.

Isaac Newton

Dec 04, 2012

410 likes | 1.14k Views

Isaac Newton. Nature, and Nature’s Laws lay hid in Night. God said, Let Newton be! and All was Light. Isaac Newton , 1642-1727. Born December 25, 1642 by the Julian Calendar or January 4, 1643 by the Gregorian Calendar. From a family of yeomen farmers.

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Presentation Transcript

Isaac Newton Nature, and Nature’s Laws lay hid in Night. God said, Let Newton be! and All was Light.

Isaac Newton, 1642-1727 • Born December 25, 1642 • by the Julian Calendar • or January 4, 1643 by the Gregorian Calendar. • From a family of yeomen farmers. • His father died some months before Newton was born (a "posthumous" child). • His mother remarried and left Newton to be raised by her mother.

Woolsthorpe Manor • Newton was slated to take over family estate and manage a farm, but was obviously too interested in books and study. Newton’s birthplace, Woolsthorpe Manor, in Lincolnshire.

Trinity College, Cambridge • Sent to Trinity College, University of Cambridge in 1661. Took an ordinary BA in 1665.

Newton discovered the world of mathematics and natural philosophy • After finishing his BA, Newton planned to stay on at Cambridge for further study. • In his last years at Cambridge as an undergraduate, Newton had become very interested in the new mechanical philosophy (Descartes, etc.), in mathematics, and in Copernican astronomy.

The Plague hits England • An outbreak of the plague hit England in 1666. • Cambridge closed for 18 months. • Newton returned to Woolsthorpe to wait it out.

Newton's Annus Mirabilis • Newton’s “miracle year,” 1666 • A date to remember. This is the fifth date you must remember in this course. • During the plague, Newton returned home, thought about his new interests and made his most original insights.

Light Calculus The falling apple 3 Major Insights of 1666

Light • Light one of the great mysteries. • Magical nature • Connected with the Sun, with fire, with vision. • Colour thought of as a quality, e.g. blueness. • Mathematical or mechanical treatment seemed impossible. • Descartes believed colours due to the spin of light particles.

Newton investigates light • Newton undertook to investigate using a triangular prism • Concluded that coloured light is simple • There are particles of blue light, particles of red light, etc. • White light is a mixture of coloured lights

The Crucial Experiment • The crucial experiment--on light of a single colour

Light as Particles • Particles, not waves because light rays move in straight lines. • The diagram is Newton’s illustration of what light waves would do, passing through a small opening.

Letter to Royal Society, 1672 A Letter of Mr. Isaac Newton, Professor of the Mathematicks in the University of Cambridge; containing his New Theory about Light and Colors: sent by the Author to the Publisher from Cambridge, Febr. 6. 1671/72; in order to be communicated to the R. Society. Sir, To perform my late promise to you I shall without further ceremony acquaint you that in the beginning of the Year 1666 (at which time I applyed my self to the grinding of Optick glasses of other figures than Spherical) I procured me a Triangular glass-Prisme, to try therewith the celebrated Phænomena of Colours.And in order thereto having darkened my chamber, and made a small hole in my window-shuts, to let in a convenient quantity of the Sun’s light, I placed my Prisme at his entrance, that it might be thereby refracted to the opposite wall. It was at first a pleasing divertisement, to view the vivid and intense colours produced thereby; but after a while applying my self to consider them more circumspectly, I became surprised to see them in an oblong form; which, according to the received laws of Refraction, I expected should have been circular….

The Calculus • Concerns quantities that change over time (or space). • Example: If the speed of a falling body changes constantly, how fast is it going at any given moment? • According to Zeno, it is not going anywhere in a fixed instant. • speed = velocity = (distance travelled)/(time used) = d/t • In any instant, t = o, d = o • What is 0/0?

Average Velocity • Can be expressed as the total distance divided by the total time. • Example: • A car trip from Toronto to Kingston takes 3 hours and the distance is 300 km. • The average speed of the car is 300 km/3 hrs = 100 km/hr. • This is the average speed, though the car may have sped up and slowed down many times.

Instantaneous velocity • What is the car’s speed at any given moment? • What does that number on the speedometer really mean?Newton’s definition: • Instantaneous Velocity = the Limit of Average Velocity as the time interval approaches zero.

Smaller and smaller time intervals • Suppose on a trip to Kingston along the 401, the car went 50km in the 1st hour, 100 km in the 2nd hour, and 150 km in the 3rd hour. • The total time remains 3 hours and the total distance remains 300 km, so the average speed for the trip remains 100 km/hr. • But the average speed for the 1st hour is 50 km/hr; for the 2nd is 100 km/hr; and for the third is 150 km/hr.

Still, the problem of 0/0 • As the time intervals get smaller, a closer approximation to how fast the car is moving at any time is still expressible as distance divided by time. • But if you get down to zero time, there is zero distance, and Zeno’s objections hold.

Newton’s clever way to calculate the impossible • Newton found a way to manipulate an equation so that one side of it provided an answer while the other side seemed to defy common sense. • For example, Galileo’s law of falling bodies, expressed as an equation in Descartes’ analytic geometry.

Deriving a meaning for 0/0 • The equation for the position of a falling body near the surface of the Earth is: s = 4.9t2 Where • s is the total distance fallen, • 4.9 is the distance the object falls in the 1st second, expressed in meters, • and t is the time elapsed, in seconds.

Calculation of the Limit of Average Velocity • The average velocity of a falling object over any interval of time during its fall is d/t, that is, distance (during that interval), divided by the time elapsed. • For example, by Galileo’s Odd-number rule, if an object falls 4.8 meters in the 1st second, in the 3rd second it will fall 5x4.8 meters = 24 meters. • Its average velocity during the 3rd second of its fall is 24 meters per second.

But the object speeds up constantly • The smaller the time interval chosen, the closer will the average velocity be to the velocity at any moment during that interval. • Suppose one could take an arbitrarily small interval of time. • Call it Δt. Call the distance travelled during that small interval of time ∆s.

Approximating the instantaneous velocity • The average velocity of a moving object is distance divided by time. • The average velocity during the arbitrarily small interval Δt is therefore Δs/Δt • The smaller Δt is, the closer will be Δs/Δt to the “real” velocity at time t.

Working with the Galileo/Descartes equation • 1. s = 4.9t2 • 2. s + ∆s= 4.9(t+∆t)2 • 3. s + ∆s= 4.9(t 2+2t∆t + [∆t ]2) • 4. s + ∆s= 4.9t 2+9.8t∆t + 4.9[∆t ]2 • Now, subtract line 1. from line 4. (Equals subtracted from equals.) • 5. (s + ∆s) – s = (4.9t 2+9.8t∆t + 4.9[∆t ]2) - 4.9t2 • 6. ∆s = 9.8t∆t + 4.9(∆t )2 • Line 6 gives a value for the increment of distance in terms of the total time, t, and the incremental time, ∆t.

Working with the Galileo/Descartes equation, 2 • 6. ∆s = 9.8t∆t + 4.9(∆t )2 • Now, divide line 6. by the time increment, ∆t . • 7. ∆s /∆t = [9.8t∆t + 4.9(∆t )2]/∆t • Which simplifies to • 8. ∆s /∆t = 9.8t + 4.9∆t • What happens to ∆s /∆t when ∆t (and ∆s ) go to zero? • We don't know because 0/0 is not defined.

Working with the Galileo/Descartes equation, 4 • Newton’s solution: • Forget about the left side of the equation: • 8. ∆s /∆t = 9.8t + 4.9∆t • Just look at what happens on the right side. • As ∆t becomes smaller and smaller, • 9. 9.8t + 4.9∆t becomes 9.8t + 4.9(0)= 9.8t

Working with the Galileo/Descartes equation, 5 • As the time increment ∆t gets closer and closer to zero, • 10. ∆s /∆t gets closer to 9.8t . • Since the left side of the equation must equal the right side and the left side is the velocity when ∆t goesto zero, then9.8 t is the instantaneous velocity at time t. • Example: After 3 full seconds of free fall, the object falling will have reached the speed of 9.8 x 3 = 29.4 meters per second. ∆t

Newton’s breakthrough • Newton’s genius in the calculus was to find a way to get around the static definitions which ruled out such calculations. • He was willing to entertain the “impossible” idea of an object moving in an instant of time, and found an answer.

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