Who Was Isaac Newton?
Isaac Newton, a physicist and mathematician, is acknowledged as one of the great brains of the 17th-century Scientific Revolution for developing the concepts of modern physics, particularly the laws of motion.
philosophize Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy), which has been dubbed the single most significant book on physics, was published in 1687. Queen Anne of England knighted him in 1705, creating him Sir Isaac Newton.
Early Life and Family.
Newton was born at Wools Thorpe, Lincolnshire, England, on January 4, 1643. Newton's birth date is occasionally given as December 25, 1642, when using the "old" Julian calendar.
Newton was the only child of Isaac, a successful local farmer who died three months before his birth. Newton, a premature infant who was born tiny and feeble, was not expected to live.
His mother, Hannah Ayscough Newton, remarried and moved in with a wealthy pastor, Barnabas Smith, when he was three years old, leaving young Newton with his maternal grandmother.
Newton's experience left an unforgettable mark on him, which eventually manifested as a deep sense of uneasiness. He was preoccupied with his published work and defended it with unreasonable actions.
Newton was reunited with his mother when he was 12 years old, after her second husband died. She took her three tiny children from a previous marriage with her.
Isaac Newton's Education.
Newton enrolled at the King's School in Grantham, Lincolnshire, where he stayed with a local apothecary and learned about chemistry.
At the age of 12, his mother took him out of school. Her objective was to train him as a farmer and assign him to the care of the property. Newton failed terribly because he disliked farming. Newton was quickly returned to King's School to complete his elementary schooling.
Newton's uncle, a graduate of the Institution of Cambridge's Trinity College, encouraged Newton's mother to allow him to attend the university, maybe perceiving the young man's latent intellectual skills. In 1661, Newton enrolled in a work-study programme, where he served tables and looked after the rooms of the wealthier pupils.
Scientific Revolution.
When Newton arrived at Cambridge, the 17th century Scientific Revolution was well underway. Heliocentric universe theory (Nicolaus Copernicus, Johannes Kepler, Galileo) was well-known in most European academic circles.
René Descartes was developing a new view of nature as an intricate, impersonal, and lifeless machine. Cambridge, like most European colleges, was immersed in Aristotelian philosophy and a geocentric understanding of nature, dealing with nature in qualitative rather than quantitative ways.
Newton studied the normal curriculum for his first three years at Cambridge but was attracted with advanced science. He spent all his leisure time reading modern thinkers. Due to his simultaneous studies, he had a less than outstanding performance.
During this time, Newton kept "Quaestiones Quaedam Philosophical" notes ("Certain Philosophical Questions"). The "Quaestiones" reveal Newton's revolutionary idea of nature, which framed the Scientific Revolution. However, Newton earned the title of scholar and a four-year scholarship despite not graduating with honors.
The bubonic plague hit Cambridge in 1665, forcing the institution to close. After a two-year break, Newton returned to Cambridge in 1667 and was elected a minor fellow at Trinity College.
Newton quickly penned De Analyze, presenting his own broader conclusions. He sent it to his mentor and friend Isaac Barrow, but didn't credit him.
For the first time, mathematicians learned about Newton's work. Barrow relinquished his Lucasian position at Cambridge soon after, and Newton took over.
Newton achieved breakthroughs in the fields of optics, motion, and mathematics. Newton proposed that white light was made up of particles and that it was made up of all the colors in the spectrum.
His seminal physics book, Principia, covers practically all of the fundamental notions of physics, save energy, and finally aids him in explaining the laws of motion and the theory of gravity. Newton is credited with establishing basic theories of calculus, together with mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz.
In 1668, Newton designed and built a reflecting telescope, which was his first big public scientific achievement. Newton was expected to give an annual course of lectures as a professor at Cambridge, and he chose optics as his first topic. He studied optics with his telescope and utilized it to prove his theories of light and colour.
Many of Newton's most important insights, such as the method of infinitesimal calculus, the foundations for his theory of light and colour, and the laws of planetary motion, were conceived during his 18-month hiatus as a student, and eventually led to the publication of his physics book Principia and his theory of gravity.
