Isaac Newton
A great scientist of the past
Sir
Isaac Newton is considered as one of the greatest figures in the history
of science. The Englishman was a physicist, mathematician, astronomer,
natural philosopher and alchemist, and made many contributions to the
advancement of science.
Newton was recorded as having been born on January 4, 1643, according
to the modern calendar. (At the time of his birth, England had not
adopted the latest papal calendar and therefore, his date of birth was
recorded as
Christmas Day 1642.)
He was born at Woolsthorpe Manor in Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth, a
hamlet in the county of Lincolnshire, three months after his father,
also called Isaac, died. He was born prematurely, and was a small child.
His mother, Hannah Ayscough, remarried when the boy was three years
old, and went to live with her new husband, leaving her son in the care
of her mother, Margery Ayscough. The young Newton disliked his
stepfather and had some anger towards his mother for marrying him.
Newton started attending the village school and was later sent to
King's School, Grantham, where he became the top student (his signature
can still be seen on a window sill of the school library). He was then
staying with the local apothecary, William Clarke and fell in love with
Clarke's stepdaughter, Anne Storey.
The 19-year-old Newton had then gone on to Cambridge University, and
their romance had cooled off; Newton never married.
At Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied, the teachings were
based on the ideas of Aristotle, but Newton preferred the more advanced
ideas of modern philosophers and astronomers. He discovered the
generalised binomial theorem in 1665, and started working on a
mathematical theory that would later become calculus.
The Great Plague caused the university to close down temporarily,
soon after Newton had obtained his degree. During this period, Newton
worked at home developing ideas such as calculus, optics and the law of
gravitation.
Although Newton and Gottfried Leibniz had developed calculus
independently (in fact, Newton had developed his method years before
Leibniz), he started publishing it only in 1693, and gave a full account
of his theory only in 1704.
Meanwhile, Leibniz had published a full account of his work in 1684.
Some of the discoveries he is credited with are Newton's identities,
Newton's method and classified cubic plane curves; he made substantial
contributions to the theory of finite differences, and was the first to
use fractional indices and to employ coordinate geometry to derive
solutions to Diophantine equations. He also discovered a new formula for
the mathematical number known as pi.
In 1669, Newton was elected Lucasian professor of mathematics.
Although any Fellow of Cambridge or Oxford had to be ordained as an
Anglican priest at that time (they didn't need to be active in the
church), Newton was exempted from this.
Newton experimented and lectured on optics between 1670 and 1672.
This included an investigation on the refraction(bending) of light; he
demonstrated that a prism could break down white light into a spectrum
of colours, and that a lens and a second prism could again make the
multicoloured spectrum into white light.
After many experiments, Newton decided that a refracting telescope
would be affected by the dispersion of light into colours, and invented
a reflecting telescope (today known as a Newtonian telescope) as a
solution.
The Royal Society expressed interest in learning more about this
telescope, which encouraged him to publish his notes On Colour, which he
later expanded into a publication called Opticks.
His most important contribution is the discovery of gravity. It's
said that Newton formulated his theory of universal gravitation after
watching an apple fall from a tree.
The great scientist was also responsible for a large number of
religious literature in the 1690s; he also placed the crucifixion of
Jesus Christ at April 3, AD 33, which is now accepted to be correct.
He also devoted a lot of time to alchemy (early form of chemistry)
and was a member of the British Parliament from 1689 to 1690 and in
1701. In 1696, he was appointed the warden of the Royal Mint (where
coins are made), which post he held until his death.
He became one of the best known masters of the Mint, being
responsible for reforms which added considerably to the wealth and
stability of England. Queen Anne bestowed a knighthood on him in 1705
for his work at the Mint.
Newton was made President of the Royal Society in 1703 and an
associate of the French Academie des Sciences. He died in London on
March 20 (31 according to calendar variations), 1727, and was buried in
Westminster Abbey.
It was revealed after his death that his body contained large amounts
of mercury, which may have been a result of his alchemy experiments.
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Newton's laws of motion
The famous three laws of motion:
* Newton's First Law (Law of Inertia) - An object at rest tends to
stay at rest and an object in uniform motion tends to stay in uniform
motion unless acted upon by a net external force.
* Newton's Second Law - A force applied on an object equals the time
rate of change of its momentum.
* Newton's Third Law - Every action has an equal and opposite
reaction.
***
Writings by Newton
* Method of Fluxions (1671)
* Of Nature's Obvious Laws & Processes in Vegetation (1671-75)
* Unpublished work on alchemy
* De Motu Corporum in Gyrum (1684)
* Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687)
* Opticks (1704)
* Reports as Master of the Mint (1701-25)
* Arithmetica Universalis (1707)
* Short Chronicle, The System of the World, Optical Lectures, The
Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms, Amended and De mundi systemate were
published posthumously (after his death) in 1728.
* An Historical Account of Two Notable Corruptions of Scripture
(1754). |