Isaac Newton was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist, and theologian born in 1642 who made seminal contributions to the sciences. He developed the laws of motion and universal gravitation, which dominated the scientific view of the physical universe for the next three centuries. Newton published his work Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica in 1687, which contains his laws of motion and gravitation and remains one of the most influential books in the history of science.