Sir isaac newton biography summary pages

At age 12, Newton was reunited with his mother after her second husband died. She brought along her three small children from her second marriage. Newton was enrolled at the King's School in Grantham, a town in Lincolnshire, where he lodged with a local apothecary and was introduced to the fascinating world of chemistry. His mother pulled him out of school at age Her plan was to make him a farmer and have him tend the farm.

Sir isaac newton biography summary pages: English physicist and mathematician who

Newton failed miserably, as he found farming monotonous. Newton was soon sent back to King's School to finish his basic education. Perhaps sensing the young man's innate intellectual abilities, his uncle, a graduate of the University of Cambridge's Trinity Collegepersuaded Newton's sir isaac newton biography summary pages to have him enter the university.

Newton enrolled in a program similar to a work-study inand subsequently waited on tables and took care of wealthier students' rooms. When Newton arrived at Cambridge, the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century was already in full force. The heliocentric view of the universe—theorized by astronomers Nicolaus Copernicus and Johannes Kepler, and later refined by Galileo —was well known in most European academic circles.

Yet, like most universities in Europe, Cambridge was steeped in Aristotelian philosophy and a view of nature resting on a geocentric view of the universe, dealing with nature in qualitative rather than quantitative terms. During his first three years at Cambridge, Newton was taught the standard curriculum but was fascinated with the more advanced science.

All his spare time was spent reading from the modern philosophers. The result was a less-than-stellar performance, but one that is understandable, given his dual course of study. It was during this time that Newton kept a second set of notes, entitled "Quaestiones Quaedam Philosophicae" "Certain Philosophical Questions". The "Quaestiones" reveal that Newton had discovered the new concept of nature that provided the framework for the Scientific Revolution.

Though Newton graduated without honors or distinctions, his efforts won him the title of scholar and four years of financial support for future education. Inthe bubonic plague that was ravaging Europe had come to Cambridge, forcing the university to close. After a two-year hiatus, Newton returned to Cambridge in and was elected a minor fellow at Trinity College, as he was still not considered a standout scholar.

In the ensuing years, his fortune improved. Newton received his Master of Arts degree inbefore he was During this time, he came across Nicholas Mercator's published book on methods for dealing with infinite series. Newton quickly wrote a treatise, De Analysiexpounding his own wider-ranging results. He shared this with friend and mentor Isaac Barrow, but didn't include his name as author.

In AugustBarrow identified its author to Collins as "Mr. Newton's work was brought to the attention of the mathematics community for the first time. Shortly afterward, Barrow resigned his Lucasian professorship at Cambridge, and Newton assumed the chair. Newton made discoveries in optics, motion and mathematics. Newton theorized that white light was a composite of all colors of the spectrum, and that light was composed of particles.

His momentous book on physics, Principiacontains information on nearly all of the essential concepts of physics except energy, ultimately helping him to explain the laws of motion and the theory of gravity. Along with mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, Newton is credited for developing essential theories of calculus. Newton's first major public scientific achievement was designing and constructing a reflecting telescope in As a professor at Cambridge, Newton was required to deliver an annual course of lectures and chose optics as his initial topic.

He used his telescope to study optics and help prove his theory of light and color. The Royal Society asked for a demonstration of his reflecting telescope inand the organization's interest encouraged Newton to publish his notes on light, optics and color in Between andNewton returned home from Trinity College to pursue his private study, as school was closed due to the Great Plague.

Legend has it that, at this time, Newton experienced his famous inspiration of gravity with the falling apple. Inhe was knighted by Queen Anne of England. In the meantime, German mathematician Gottfried Leibniz formulated his own mathematical theories and published them in 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, and his writings on those subjects were 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 in his sleep on March 31,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. Newton had committed himself to the doctrine that refraction without colour was impossible. He, therefore, thought that the object-glasses of telescopes must forever remain imperfect, achromatism and refraction being incompatible.

This inference was proved by Dollond to be wrong. Newton had been developing his theory of gravitation as far back as Newton's reawakening interest in astronomical matters received further stimulus by the appearance of a comet in the winter of —, on which he corresponded with John Flamsteed. He communicated his results to Edmond Halley and to the Royal Society in De motu corporum in gyruma tract written on about nine sheets which was copied into the Royal Society's Register Book in December The Principia was published on 5 July with encouragement and financial help from Halley.

In this work, Newton stated the three universal laws of motion. Together, these laws describe the relationship between any object, the forces acting upon it and the resulting motion, laying the foundation for classical mechanics. They contributed to many advances during the Industrial Revolution which soon followed and were not improved upon for more than years.

Many of these advances continue to be the underpinnings of non-relativistic technologies in the modern world. He used the Latin word gravitas weight for the effect that would become known as gravityand defined the law of universal gravitation. In the same work, Newton presented a calculus-like method of geometrical analysis using 'first and last ratios', gave the first analytical determination based on Boyle's law of the speed of sound in air, inferred the oblateness of Earth's spheroidal figure, accounted for the precession of the equinoxes as a result of the Moon's gravitational attraction on the Earth's oblateness, initiated the gravitational study of the irregularities in the motion of the Moonprovided a theory for the determination of the orbits of comets, and much more.

Sir isaac newton biography summary pages: Sir Isaac Newton (25 December

According to Brewster, Halley also told John Conduitt that when pressed to complete his analysis Newton "always replied that it made his head ache, and kept him awake so often, that he would think of it no more ". Newton made clear his heliocentric view of the Solar System—developed in a somewhat modern way because already in the mids he recognised the "deviation of the Sun" from the centre of gravity of the Solar System.

Newton adopted the "at rest" alternative in view of common consent that the centre, wherever it was, was at rest. Newton was criticised for introducing " occult agencies" into science because of his postulate of an invisible force able to act over vast distances. Here he used what became his famous expression " Hypotheses non fingo ".

With the PrincipiaNewton became internationally recognised. InNewton found 72 of the 78 "species" of cubic curves and categorised them into four types. Newton also claimed that the four types could be obtained by plane projection from one of them, and this was proved infour years after his death. Starting with the second edition of his PrincipiaNewton included a final section on science philosophy or method.

It was sir isaac newton biography summary pages that he wrote his famous line, in Latin, "hypotheses non fingo", which can be translated as "I sir isaac newton biography summary pages make hypotheses," the direct translation of "fingo" is "frame", but in context he was advocating against the use of hypotheses in science.

He went on to posit that if there is no data to explain a finding, one should simply wait for that data, rather than guessing at an explanation. The quote in part as translated is, "Hitherto I have not been able to discover the cause of those properties of gravity from phenomena, and I frame no hypotheses, for whatever is not deduced from the phenomena is to be called an hypothesis; and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, whether of occult qualities or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy.

In this philosophy particular propositions are inferred from the phenomena, and afterwards rendered general by induction. Thus it was that the impenetrability, the mobility, and the impulsive force of bodies, and the laws of motion and of gravitation, were discovered. And to us it is enough that gravity does really exist, and act according to the laws which we have explained, and abundantly serves to account for all the motions of the celestial bodies, and of our sea.

This idea that Newton became anti-hypothesis has been disputed, since earlier editions of the Principia were in fact divided in sections headed by hypotheses. However, he seems to have gone away from that, as evidenced from his famous line in his "Opticks", where he wrote, in English, "Hypotheses have no place in experimental science.

In the s, Newton wrote a number of religious tracts dealing with the literal and symbolic interpretation of the Bible. A manuscript Newton sent to John Locke in which he disputed the fidelity of 1 John —the Johannine Comma —and its fidelity to the original manuscripts of the New Testament, remained unpublished until Newton was also a member of the Parliament of England for Cambridge University in andbut according to some accounts his only comments were to complain about a cold draught in the chamber and request that the window be closed.

He took charge of England's great recoining, trod on the toes of Lord Lucas, Governor of the Tower, and secured the job of deputy comptroller of the temporary Chester branch for Edmond Halley. Newton became perhaps the best-known Master of the Mint upon the death of Thomas Neale ina position he held for the last 30 years of his life.

He retired from his Cambridge duties inand exercised his authority to reform the currency and punish clippers and counterfeiters. As Warden, and afterwards as Master, of the Royal Mint, Newton estimated that 20 percent of the coins taken in during the Great Recoinage of were counterfeit. Counterfeiting was high treasonpunishable by the felon being hanged, drawn and quartered.

Despite this, convicting even the most flagrant criminals could be extremely difficult, but Newton proved equal to the task. Newton had himself made a justice of the peace in all the home counties. He successfully prosecuted 28 coiners, including serial counterfeiter William Chalonerwho was subsequently hanged. Beyond prosecuting counterfeiters, he improved minting technology and reduced the standard deviation of the weight of guineas from 1.

Starting inNewton introduced the practice of testing a small sample of coins, a pound in weight, in the trial of the pyxwhich helped to reduce the size of admissible error. The knighthood is likely to have been motivated by political considerations connected with the parliamentary election in Mayrather than any recognition of Newton's scientific work or services as Master of the Mint.

As a result of a report written by Newton on 21 September to the Lords Commissioners of His Majesty's Treasury, the bimetallic relationship between gold coins and silver coins was changed by royal proclamation on 22 Decemberforbidding the exchange of gold guineas for more than 21 silver shillings. It is a matter of debate as to whether he intended to do this or not.

Toward the end of his life, Newton took up residence at Cranbury Parknear Winchesterwith his niece and her husband, until his death. He was the first scientist to be buried in the abbey. Shortly after his death, a plaster death mask was moulded of Newton. Newton's hair was posthumously examined and found to contain mercuryprobably resulting from his alchemical pursuits.

Mercury poisoning could explain Newton's eccentricity in late life. Although it was claimed that he was once engaged, [ b ] Newton never married. The French writer and philosopher Voltairewho was in London at the time of Newton's funeral, said that he "was never sensible to any passion, was not subject to the common frailties of mankind, nor had any commerce with women—a circumstance which was assured me by the physician and surgeon who attended him in his last moments.

Newton had a close friendship with the Swiss mathematician Nicolas Fatio de Duillierwhom he met in London around ; [ ] some of their correspondence has survived. Newton appeared to be relatively modest about his achievements, writing in a later memoir, "I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

Although born into an Anglican family, by his thirties Newton held a Christian faith that, had it been made public, would not have been considered orthodox by mainstream Christianity, [ ] with historian Stephen Snobelen labelling him a heretic. Byhe had started to record his theological researches in notebooks which he showed to no one and which have only been available for public examination since Newton "recognized Christ as a divine mediator between God and man, who was subordinate to the Father who created him.

Newton tried unsuccessfully to obtain one of the two fellowships that exempted the holder from the ordination requirement. At the last moment in he received a dispensation from the government that excused him and all future holders of the Lucasian chair. Worshipping Jesus Christ as God was, in Newton's eyes, idolatryan act he believed to be the fundamental sin.

He hid his faith so well that scholars are still unraveling his personal beliefs. Although the laws of motion and universal gravitation became Newton's best-known discoveries, he warned against using them to view the Universe as a mere machine, as if akin to a great clock. He said, "So then gravity may put the planets into motion, but without the Divine Power it could never put them into such a circulating motion, as they have about the sun".

Along with his scientific fame, Newton's studies of the Bible and of the early Church Fathers were also noteworthy. He believed in a rationally immanent world, but he rejected the hylozoism implicit in Leibniz and Baruch Spinoza. The ordered and dynamically informed Universe could be understood, and must be understood, by an active reason.

In his correspondence, Newton claimed that in writing the Principia "I had an eye upon such Principles as might work with considering men for the belief of a Deity". But Newton insisted that divine intervention would eventually be required to reform the system, due to the slow growth of instabilities. He had not, it seems, sufficient foresight to make it a perpetual motion.

Newton's position was defended by his follower Samuel Clarke in a famous correspondence. A century later, Pierre-Simon Laplace 's work Celestial Mechanics had a natural explanation for why the planet orbits do not require periodic divine intervention. Scholars long debated whether Newton disputed the doctrine of the Trinity. His first biographer, David Brewsterwho compiled his manuscripts, interpreted Newton as questioning the veracity of some passages used to support the Trinity, but never denying the doctrine of the Trinity as such.

Newton and Robert Boyle 's approach to the mechanical philosophy was promoted by rationalist pamphleteers as a viable alternative to the pantheists and enthusiastsand was accepted hesitantly by orthodox preachers as well as dissident preachers like the latitudinarians. The attacks made against pre- Enlightenment " magical thinking ", and the mystical elements of Christianitywere given their foundation with Boyle's mechanical conception of the universe.

Newton gave Boyle's ideas their completion through mathematical proofs and, perhaps more importantly, was very successful in popularising them. Newton was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians, the last of the Babylonians and Sumerians, the last great mind which looked out on the visible and intellectual world with the same eyes as those who began to build our intellectual inheritance rather less than 10, years ago.

Isaac Newton, a posthumous child born with no father on Christmas Day,was the last wonderchild to whom the Magi could do sincere and appropriate homage. Of an estimated ten million words of writing in Newton's papers, about one million deal with alchemy. Many of Newton's writings on alchemy are copies of other manuscripts, with his own annotations.

Inafter spending sixteen years cataloguing Newton's papers, Cambridge University kept a small number and returned the rest to the Earl of Portsmouth. Ina descendant offered the papers for sale at Sotheby's. Keynes went on to reassemble an estimated half of Newton's collection of papers on alchemy before donating his collection to Cambridge University in All of Newton's known writings on alchemy are currently being put online in a project undertaken by Indiana University : "The Chymistry of Isaac Newton" [ ] and has been summarised in a book.

Newton's fundamental contributions to science include the quantification of gravitational attraction, the discovery that white light is actually a mixture of immutable spectral colors, and the formulation of the calculus. Yet there is another, more mysterious side to Newton that is imperfectly known, a realm of activity that spanned some thirty years of his life, although he kept it largely hidden from his contemporaries and colleagues.

We refer to Newton's involvement in the discipline of alchemy, or as it was often called in seventeenth-century England, "chymistry. In Junetwo unpublished pages of Newton's notes on Jan Baptist van Helmont 's book on plague, De Peste[ ] were being auctioned online by Bonhams. Newton's analysis of this book, which he made in Cambridge while protecting himself from London's — infectionis the most substantial written statement he is known to have made about the plague, according to Bonhams.

As far as the therapy is concerned, Newton writes that "the best is a toad suspended by the legs in a chimney for three days, which at last vomited up earth with various insects in it, on to a dish of yellow wax, and shortly after died. Combining powdered toad with the excretions and serum made into lozenges and worn about the affected area drove away the contagion and drew out the poison".

The mathematician and astronomer Joseph-Louis Lagrange frequently asserted that Newton was the greatest genius who ever lived, [ ] and once added that Newton was also "the most fortunate, for we cannot find more than sir isaac newton biography summary pages a system of the world to establish. Nature, and Nature's laws lay hid in night.

God said, Let Newton be! But this was not allowed to be inscribed in Newton's monument at Westminster. The epitaph added is as follows: [ ]. Here is buried Isaac Newton, Knight, who by a strength of mind almost divine, and mathematical principles peculiarly his own, explored the course and figures of the planets, the paths of comets, the tides of the sea, the dissimilarities in rays of light, and, what no other scholar has previously imagined, the properties of the colours thus produced.

Diligent, sagacious and faithful, in his expositions of nature, antiquity and the holy Scriptures, he vindicated by his philosophy the majesty of God mighty and good, and expressed the simplicity of the Gospel in his manners. Mortals rejoice that there has existed such and so great an ornament of the human race! He was born on 25th Decemberand died on 20th March Newton has been called "the most influential figure in the history of Western science", [ ] and has been regarded as "the central figure in the history of science", who "more than anyone else is the source of our great confidence in the power of science.

Newton has further been called "the towering figure of the Scientific Revolution " and that "In a period rich with outstanding thinkers, Newton was simply the most outstanding. The physicist Ludwig Boltzmann called Newton's Principia "the first and greatest work ever written about theoretical physics ". Physicist Edward Andrade stated that Newton "was capable of greater sustained mental effort than any man, before or since", and noted earlier the place of Isaac Newton in history, stating: [ ].

From time to time in the history of mankind a man arises who is of universal significance, whose work changes the current of human thought or of human experience, so that all that comes after him bears evidence of his spirit. Such a man was Shakespearesuch a man was Beethovensuch a man was Newton, and, of the three, his kingdom is the most widespread.

The French physicist and mathematician Jean-Baptiste Biot praised Newton's genius, stating that: [ ]. Never was the supremacy of intellect so justly established and so fully confessed. In mathematical and in experimental science without an equal and without an example; combining the genius for both in its highest degree. Despite his rivalry with Gottfried Wilhem LeibnizLeibniz still praised the work of Newton, with him responding to a question at a dinner in from Sophia Charlottethe Queen of Prussia, about his view of Newton with: [ ] [ ].

Taking mathematics from the beginning of the world to the time of when Newton lived, what he had done was much the better half. Mathematician E. Bell ranked Newton alongside Carl Friedrich Gauss and Archimedes as the three greatest mathematicians of all time. Gauss, and among the best experimentalists ever, thereby "putting Newton in a class by himself among empirical scientists, for one has trouble in thinking of any other candidate who was in the first rank of even two of these categories.

The whole evolution of our ideas about the processes of nature, with which we have been concerned so far, might be regarded as an organic development of Newton's ideas. Inan opinion poll of of the day's leading physicists voted Einstein the "greatest physicist ever," with Newton the runner-up, while a parallel survey of rank-and-file physicists ranked Newton as the greatest.

InTime named Newton the Person of the Century for the 17th century. Physicist Lev Landau ranked physicists on a logarithmic scale of productivity and genius ranging from 0 to 5. The highest ranking, 0, was assigned to Newton. Einstein was ranked 0. A rank of 1 was awarded to the fathers of quantum mechanicssuch as Werner Heisenberg and Paul Dirac.

Landau, a Nobel prize winner and the discoverer of superfluidityranked himself as 2. The SI derived unit of force is named the Newton in his honour. 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 at any single moment, [ ] acquaintances of Newton such as William Stukeleywhose manuscript account of has been made available by the Royal Society do in fact confirm the incident, though not the apocryphal version that the apple actually hit Newton's head.

John ConduittNewton's assistant at the Royal Mint and husband of Newton's niece, also described the event when he wrote about Newton's life: [ ].

Sir isaac newton biography summary pages: Sir Isaac Newton invented calculus

In the year he retired again from Cambridge to his mother in Lincolnshire. Whilst he was pensively meandering in a garden it came into his thought that the power of gravity which brought an apple from a tree to the ground was not limited to a certain distance from earth, but that this power must extend much further than was usually thought.

It is known from his notebooks that Newton was grappling in the late s with the idea that terrestrial gravity extends, in an inverse-square proportion, to the Moon; however, it took him two decades to develop the full-fledged theory. Newton showed that if the force decreased as the inverse square of the distance, one could indeed calculate the Moon's orbital period, and get good agreement.

He guessed the same force was responsible for other orbital motions, and hence named it "universal gravitation". Various trees are claimed to be "the" apple tree which Newton describes. The King's School, Grantham claims that the tree was purchased by the school, uprooted and transported to the headmaster's garden some years later.

The staff of the now National Trust -owned Woolsthorpe Manor dispute this, and claim that a tree present in their gardens is the one described by Newton. A descendant of the original tree [ ] can be seen growing outside the main gate of Trinity College, Cambridge, below the room Newton lived in when he studied there. The National Fruit Collection at Brogdale in Kent [ ] can supply grafts from their tree, which appears identical to Flower of Kenta coarse-fleshed cooking variety.

Newton's monument can be seen in Westminster Abbeyat the north of the entrance to the choir against the choir screen, near his tomb. It was executed by the sculptor Michael Rysbrack — in white and grey marble with design by the architect William Kent. Above him is a pyramid and a celestial globe showing the signs of the Zodiac and the path of the comet of A relief panel depicts putti using instruments such as a telescope and prism.

Newton was shown on the reverse of the notes holding a book and accompanied by a telescope, a prism and a map of the Solar System. A large bronze statue, Newton, after William Blakeby Eduardo Paolozzidated and inspired by Blake 's etchingdominates the piazza of the British Library in London. A bronze statue of Newton was erected in in the centre of Grantham where he went to school, prominently standing in front of Grantham Guildhall.

The still-surviving farmhouse at Woolsthorpe By Colsterworth is a Grade I listed building by Historic England through being his birthplace and "where he discovered gravity and developed his theories regarding the refraction of light". 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 is held by European philosophers of the Enlightenment and by historians of the Enlightenment that Newton's publication of the Principia was a turning point in the Scientific Revolution and started the Enlightenment. It was Newton's conception of the universe based upon natural and rationally understandable laws that became one of the seeds for Enlightenment ideology.

Monboddo and Samuel Clarke resisted elements of Newton's work, but eventually rationalised it to conform with their strong religious views of nature. Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Read View source View history. Tools Tools. Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects. Wikimedia Commons Wikiquote Wikisource Wikidata item. English polymath — For other uses, see Isaac Newton disambiguation.

Woolsthorpe-by-ColsterworthLincolnshire, England. KensingtonMiddlesex, England. FRS [ 1 ] Knight Bachelor Physics natural philosophy alchemy theology mathematics astronomy economics. Isaac Barrow [ 2 ] Benjamin Pulleyn [ 3 ]. Roger Cotes William Whiston. Main article: Early life of Isaac Newton. The King's School. Further information: Later life of Isaac Newton.

See also: Isaac Newton in popular culture. Main article: Isaac Newton's sir isaac newton biography summary pages tree. Published in his lifetime. At Newton's birth, Gregorian dates were ten days ahead of Julian dates; thus, his birth is recorded as taking place on 25 December Old Style, but it can be converted to a New Style modern date of 4 January By the time of his death, the difference between the calendars had increased to eleven days.

Moreover, he died in the period after the start of the New Style year on 1 January but before that of the Old Style new year on 25 March. Isaac Newton at Amazon. Famous English people — Famous English men and women. Including mathematicians, biologists, physicists and chemists. Ideas that changed the world — Scientific, political, religious and technological ideas that transformed the world.

Including democracy, feminism, human rights and relativity. Inventions that changed the world — Famous inventions that made a great difference to the progress of the world, including aluminium, the telephone and the printing press. Newton at Cambridge At Cambridge, he was able to pursue his interests in mathematics, science and physics. His many accomplishments in the field of science include: Developing a theory of calculus.

Used power series with confidence and to revert power series. Discovered a new formula for pi. Scientific Achievements of Newton Optics — Newton made great advancements in the study of optics. In particular, he developed the spectrum by splitting white light through a prism. Telescope — Made significant improvements to the development of the telescope.

However, when his ideas were criticised by Hooke, Newton withdrew from the public debate. He developed an antagonistic and hostile attitude to Hooke, throughout his life. Mechanics and Gravitation. In his famous book Principia Mathematica. This involved explaining planetary movements.