ISAAC NEWTON
Born in 1643 in Woolsthorpe, England, Sir Isaac Newton began developing
his influential 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 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 interrupted by a failed attempt to
turn him into a farmer, 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.
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.
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. Principia propelled Newton to stardom in intellectual
circles, eventually earning universal acclaim as one of the most
important works of modern science.
With his newfound influence, Newton opposed the attempts of King
James II to reinstitute Catholic teachings at English Universities, and
was elected to represent Cambridge in Parliament in 1689. He 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.
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.
Newton was also an ardent student of history and religious doctrines,
his writings on those subjects 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 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.
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