![]() With equal, if not greater, energy and originality he also plunged into chemistry, the early history of Western civilization, and theology among his special studies was an investigation of the form and dimensions, as described in the Bible, of Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem. Newton has been regarded for almost 300 years as the founding examplar of modern physical science, his achievements in experimental investigation being as innovative as those in mathematical research. He never married and lived modestly, but was buried with great pomp in Westminster Abbey. In government, and at the Royal Society, he proved an able administrator. He was angered by criticism or opposition, and harboured resentment he was harsh towards enemies but generous to friends. Newton was modest, diffident, and a man of simple tastes. His last decades were passed in revising his major works, polishing his studies of ancient history, and defending himself against critics, as well as carrying out his official duties. His major work, Opticks, appeared the next year he was knighted in Cambridge in 1705.Īs Newtonian science became increasingly accepted on the Continent, and especially after a general peace was restored in 1714, following the War of the Spanish Succession, Newton became the most highly esteemed natural philosopher in Europe. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1671, and in 1703 he became President, being annually re-elected for the rest of his life. He became Master of the Mint in 1699, an office he retained to his death. Meanwhile, in 1696 he had moved to London as Warden of the Royal Mint. During two to three years of intense mental effort he prepared Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica ( Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy) commonly known as the Principia, although this was not published until 1687.Īs a firm opponent of the attempt by King James II to make the universities into Catholic institutions, Newton was elected Member of Parliament for the University of Cambridge to the Convention Parliament of 1689, and sat again in 1701-1702. Of these Cambridge years, in which Newton was at the height of his creative power, he singled out 1665-1666 (spent largely in Lincolnshire because of plague in Cambridge) as “the prime of my age for invention”. ![]() He remained at the university, lecturing in most years, until 1696. 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. Newton, Sir Isaac (1642-1727), mathematician and physicist, one of the foremost scientific intellects of all time. The following information came from Microsoft Encarta. He demonstrated that the motion of objects on Earth and celestial bodies could be accounted for by the same principles.Special thanks to the Microsoft Corporation for their contribution to our site. Newton used his mathematical description of gravity to derive Kepler's laws of planetary motion, account for tides, the trajectories of comets, the precession of the equinoxes and other phenomena, eradicating doubt about the Solar System's heliocentricity. In Principia, Newton formulated the laws of motion and universal gravitation that formed the dominant scientific viewpoint until it was superseded by the theory of relativity. Newton also made seminal contributions to optics, and shares credit with German mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz for developing infinitesimal calculus. His book Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, first published in 1687, established classical mechanics. Sir Isaac Newton PRS was an English mathematician, physicist, astronomer, theologian, and author who is widely recognised as one of the greatest mathematicians, physicists and most influential scientists of all time.
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