Newton was a great mathematician and physicist. He invented modern physics principles, including the law of motion. He is part of the great minds that existed in the scientific revolution of the 17th century. In 1687, Isaac published his best writing, The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. It was the most influential writing on physics. In 1705, queen Anne of England knitted his name to Sir Isaac Newton.
Isaac was born on 4/01/1643 in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England. The old Julian calendar indicates he was born on 25/12/1642. As the only son of a local farmer, he got his name Isaac from the person who had died three months before. He was born prematurely, that nobody expected him to survive. At three years, Hannah Ayscough, who was the mother, remarried to a minister. She left Isaac under the care of his grandmother. At 12 years, Isaac reunited with the mother after her husband had died.
He started school in Grantham Kings School in Lincolnshire town. His mother stopped his education at the age of 12 years intending to make him a farmer. He found farming monotonous and failed. The mother took him back to kings’ school to finish his primary education. His uncle, a university graduate, realized Isaac’s innate intellectual abilities. He persuaded his mother to allow Isaac to enroll in the university. Isaac enrolled in a work-study program at the university in 1661 for him to be able to cater for the expenses.
He joined Cambridge university when the 17th-century scientific revolution was in full force. He learned a standard curriculum in the first three years. He became more fascinated with the more advanced science. He spends most of the time reading the works of modern philosophers. He decided to keep separate notes with a title, Certain Philosophical Questions. These questions revealed that he had discovered new concepts in nature. It laid the framework for the scientific revolution. Isaac never graduated with either distinction or honors. His efforts made him win the title of a scholar. The 1665 bubonic plague that ravaged Europe forced Cambridge University to shut down. In 1667 two years of Isaacs’s hiatus, he went back to Cambridge. He got elected as a minor fellow at trinity college. Before clicking 27 years, he got his master of arts degree in 1669.
He made discoveries in motion, mathematics, and optics. For example, he theorized that light is a composite of all spectrum colors and a composition of particles. Isaacs book Principia had information on all physics concepts except energy and helped him to explain the laws of motion and the gravity theory. Together with mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, Isaac helped in bringing calculus theories.
His first significant public achievement was in 1668. He constructed and designed a reflective telescope. The telescope helped him to study optics allowing him to prove his color and light theory. From 1665 to 1667, Isaac was at home when the university closed because of the great plague. It’s time he discovered the force of gravity when an apple falls on his head. In 1687, he published Principia that had his three laws of motion.
In 1696, Isaac got the government position of the warden of the mint. He moved to London to live with Catherine Barton, his niece. Catherine was Lord Halifax’s mistress. It’s a powerful official that used her position to get newton a job as a master of the mint in 1699. In 1703, Isaac got elected as the president of the Royal Society after the death of Robert Hook.
Isaac died on 31/03/1727, aged 84.