2. Isaac Newton was a physicist and mathematician who developed 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.
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.
3. 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.
Studied at trinity college
Mathematical bridge
Like thousands of other undergraduates, Newton began his higher education by immersing himself
in Aristotle’s work.
Newton discovered the works of the French natural philosopher René 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.
4. In 1665 he found the answer to the binomial theorem, that mathematicians had struggled to
solve for years.
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.
Newton identified the force as gravity and determined its mathematical nature.
William Stukely, who was a good friend of Newton’s wrote about Newton’s Discovery in his
‘Memoirs of Issac Newton’ in 1752.
He wrote: ‘After dinner, the weather being warm, we went into the garden, and drank tea under the
shade of some apple trees…he told me, he was just in the same situation as when formally, the
notation of gravitation came to his mind. “Why should that apple always descend perpendicularly to
the ground,” thought he to himself
5. 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.
Newtons laws of motion
Newton was also an ardent student of history and religious
doctrines, his writings on those subjects compiled into multiple
books that were published posthumously.
6. Reflecting telescope.
In 1668, he was able to produce the first reflecting telescope.
It is known as Newtonian Telescope
In 1705, he was knighted by Queen Anne of England, making him Sir
Isaac Newton.
7. Newton died in his sleep in London on 31 March 1727.
After his death, Newton's body was discovered to have had massive amounts of mercury in it.
Mercury poisoning could explain Newton's eccentricity in late life.
Editor's Notes
Isaac Newton showed that by shining white light through a glass prism it could be separated back into its different wavelengths.
and that a lens and a second prism could recompose the multicolored spectrum into white light.
In the early 1690s he had sent Locke a copy of a manuscript attempting to prove that Trinitarian passages in the Bible were latter-day corruptions of the original text. When Locke made moves to publish it, Newton withdrew in fear that his anti-Trinitarian views would become known. In his later years, he devoted much time to the interpretation of the prophecies of Daniel and St. John, and to a closely related study of ancient chronology. Both works were published after his death.
Calculus - Newton invented a whole new type of mathematics which he called "fluxions." Today we call this math calculus and it is an important type of math used in advanced engineering and science.
Hence Newton's influence on the eighteenth century did not take the form of a single philosophical program or movement; instead, it was the controversial nature of his ideas and methodology that drove much of the philosophical discussion.
