Isaac Newton

1. Isaac Newton was born at Woolthorpe, Lincolnshire, England on Christmas Day 1642. On that cold winter night, the sick, premature baby seemed unlikely to live. Gradually, however, he gained strength to survive. But Isaacs first few years were a struggle. His mother had become a widow two months before Isaac was born. Even with the help of her own mother, she had difficulty caring for Isaac in addition to running their farm while the Civil War in E .....

Introduction

2. Newton, Sir Isaac (1642 1727), mathematician and physicist, one of the foremost scientific intellects of all time. Born at Woolsthorpe, near Grantham in Lincolnshire, where he attended school, he entered Cambridge University in 1661, he was elected a Fellow of Trinity College in 1667, and Lucasian Professor of Mathematics in 1669. He remained at the university, lecturing in most years, until 1696. Of these Cambridge years, in which Newton was at .....

Optics

3. In 1664, while still a student, Newton read recent work on optics and light by the English physicists Robert Boyle and Robert Hooke, he also studied both the mathematics and the physics of the French philosopher and scientist Ren? Descartes. He investigated the refraction of light by a glass prism, developing over a few years a series of increasingly elaborate, refined, and exact experiments, Newton discovered measurable, mathematical patterns in .....

Mathematics

4. In mathematics too, early brilliance appeared in Newtons student notes. He may have learnt geometry at school, though he always spoke of himself as self taught, certainly he advanced through studying the writings of his compatriots William Oughtred and John Wallis, and of Descartes and the Dutch school. Newton made contributions to all branches of mathematics then studied, but is especially famous for his solutions to the contemporary problems in .....

The calculus priority dispute

5. Newton had the essence of the methods of fluxions by 1666. The first to become known, privately, to other mathematicians, in 1668, was his method of integration by infinite series. In Paris in 1675 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz independently evolved the first ideas of his differential calculus, outlined to Newton in 1677. Newton had already described some of his mathematical discoveries to Leibniz, not including his method of fluxions. In 1684 Leibni .....

Mechanics and gravitation

6. According to the well known story, it was on seeing an apple fall in his orchard at some time during 1665 or 1666 that Newton conceived that the same force governed the motion of the Moon and the apple. He calculated the force needed to hold the Moon in its orbit, as compared with the force pulling an object to the ground. He also calculated the centripetal force needed to hold a stone in a sling, and the relation between the length of a pendulum .....

Alchemy and chemistry

7. Newton left a mass of manuscripts on the subjects of alchemy and chemistry, then closely related topics. Most of these were extracts from books, bibliographies, dictionaries, and so on, but a few are original. He began intensive experimentation in 1669, continuing till he left Cambridge, seeking to unravel the meaning that he hoped was hidden in alchemical obscurity and mysticism. He sought understanding of the nature and structure of all matter, .....

Historical and chronological studies

8. Newton owned more books on humanistic learning than on mathematics and science, all his life he studied them deeply. His unpublished classical scholia .....

Religious convictions and personality

9. Newton also wrote on Judaeo Christian prophecy, whose decipherment was essential, he thought, to the understanding of God. His book on the subject, which was reprinted well into the Victorian Age, represented lifelong study. Its message was that Christianity went astray in the 4th century AD, when the first Council of Nicaea propounded erroneous doctrines of the nature of Christ. The full extent of Newtons unorthodoxy was recognized only in the p .....

Publications

10. Newton published an edition of Geographia generalis by the German geographer Varenius in 1672. His own letters on optics appeared in print from 1672 to 1676. Then he published nothing until the Principia (published in Latin in 1687, revised in 1713 and 1726, and translated into English in 1729). This was followed by Opticks in 1704, a revised edition in Latin appeared in 1706. Posthumously published writings include The Chronology of Ancient King .....

Early life

11. Isaac Newton was born (according to the Julian calendar in use in England at the time) on Christmas Day, 25 December 1642 (NS 4 January 1643), at Woolsthorpe Manor in Woolsthorpe by Colsterworth, a hamlet in the county of Lincolnshire. He was born three months after the death of his father, a prosperous farmer also named Isaac Newton. Born prematurely, he was a small child, his mother Hannah Ayscough reportedly said that he could have fit inside .....

Apple incident

12. Newton himself often told the story that he was inspired to formulate his theory of gravitation by watching the fall of an apple from a tree.Although it has been said that the apple story is a myth and that he did not arrive at his theory of gravity in any single moment, acquaintances of Newton (such as William Stukeley, whose manuscript account of 1752 has been made available by the Royal Society) do in fact confirm the incident, though not the .....

Laws of motion

13. In the Principia, Newton gives the famous three laws of motion, stated here in modern form.Newtons First Law (also known as the Law of Inertia) states that an object at rest tends to stay at rest and that an object in uniform motion tends to stay in uniform motion unless acted upon by a net external force. The meaning of this law is the existence of reference frames (called inertial frames) where objects not acted upon by forces move in uniform m .....

Royal Mint

14. As Warden, and afterwards Master, of the Royal Mint, Newton estimated that 20 percent of the coins taken in during The Great Recoinage of 1696 were counterfeit. Counterfeiting was high treason, punishable by the felons being hanged, drawn and quartered. Despite this, convicting the most flagrant criminals could be extremely difficult. However, Newton proved to be equal to the task. Disguised as a habitu? of bars and taverns, he gathered much of t .....

Enlightenment philosophers

15. Enlightenment philosophers chose a short history of scientific predecessors Galileo, Boyle, and Newton principally as the guides and guarantors of their applications of the singular concept of Nature and Natural Law to every physical and social field of the day. In this respect, the lessons of history and the social structures built upon it could be discarded.It was Newtons conception of the Universe based upon Natural and rationally understand .....

Effect on religious thought

16. Newton and Robert Boyles approach to the mechanical philosophy was promoted by rationalist pamphleteers as a viable alternative to the pantheists and enthusiasts, and was accepted hesitantly by orthodox preachers as well as dissident preachers like the latitudinarians. The clarity and simplicity of science was seen as a way to combat the emotional and metaphysical superlatives of both superstitious enthusiasm and the threat of atheism, and at the .....

light and color

17. Not long after he donated his telescope to the Royal Society, Newton delivered a paper to that august body about his novel theory of light and colors. Using prisms and his usual very exacting experimental technique, Newton had discovered that sunlight is comprised of all the colors of the rainbow, which could not only be separated but recombined into white light.he most surprising and wonderful composition was that of Whiteness, he wrote. I have .....

Discovered calculus

18. When Newton began to muse on the problem of the motion of the planets and what kept them in their orbits around the sun, he realized that the mathematics of the day werent sufficient to the task. Properties such as direction and speed, by their very nature, were in a continuous state of flux, constantly changing with time and exhibiting varying rates of change. So he invented a new branch of mathematics, which he called the fluxions (later known .....

Advanced early modern chemistry

19. Newton spent untold hours of his life practicing alchemy. Like other alchemists, he sought to turn base metals into gold, find a universal cure for disease, and secure the elixir of life, which promised perpetual youth and eternal life. In his garden shed outside his rooms at Trinity College, Cambridge, in the midst of phials and furnaces, mortars and pestles, Newton pored over ancient texts and performed endless experiments. Yet while he never f .....

The Royal Society

20. In 1672, Newton became a member of the Royal Society a group of scientists committed to the experimental method. He presented one of his new telescopes to the Royal Society along with his findings on light. The Royal Society set up a committee led by physicist Robert Hooke to evaluate Newtons findings. Hooke was a scientist employed by the Royal Society to evaluate new inventions. However, Hooke had his own ideas on light and was slow to accept .....

Political Interference

21. Isaac Newton lived at a time when politics, religion and education were not separated. King Charles II commanded that everyone who taught at places such as Trinity College, where Church of England ministers were trained, must themselves be ordained as Church of England ministers after seven years. This included people such as Newton who taught only mathematics and science, not theology.Although a devout Christian, Newton was not in full agreement .....

Intended to become a minister

22. Isaac then went to Trinity College at Cambridge University with the intention of becoming a Church of England minister. Again, life was not easy for him. As he was unable to afford the tuition fees, he worked many hours each day serving meals and doing other jobs for the professors in order to pay his way. Isaacs knowledge of the Bible continued to impress those around him.At that time the ideas of the ancient Greek scholars still dominated what .....

Nervous Breakdown

23. Isaac Newton represented Cambridge University as a Member of Parliament in 1689 and 1690. In 1690, his health failed. This illness was probably a nervous breakdown brought on by many years of working long hours and enduring too much stress. Eventually he fully recovered. For the next few years, Newton pursued his other great love studying the Bible. The books he wrote included Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms and Observations Upon the Prophecies o .....

Royal Opposition

24. After 1685, Newton again encountered the problem of a monarch who tried to mingle politics, religion and education. The new king, James II, wanted Trinity College to award unearned degrees to those whose religious beliefs agreed with his own. Because they would not do this, Newton and eight other teachers from Trinity College were brought before the High Court on trumped up charges. Although the charges were rightfully dismissed, the episode had .....

Death

25. By the end of his life, Newton was one of the most famous men in England, his pre eminence in matters scientific unchallenged. He had also become a wealthy man, he invested his substantial income wisely, and had enough to make sizable gifts to charity and leave a small fortune behind in his will. Whether he was happy is another question. He had never made friends easily, and in his later years his peculiar combination of pride, insecurity, and di .....