Born:- 4 January 1643
Died:- 31 March 1727 (aged 84)
Known as a natural philosopher in his day, Sir Issac Newton FRS was an English polymath who worked as a mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and writer. He was born on December 25, 1642, and died on March 20, 1726/27[a]. He had a significant role in the Scientific Revolution and the subsequent Age of Enlightenment. First published in 1687, his seminal work Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy) developed classical mechanics by consolidating a number of earlier findings. In addition to his significant contributions to optics, Newton is credited with helping to establish infinitesimal calculus, although he did so years before German mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz.
Newton established the principles of motion and universal gravity in the Principia, which served as the preeminent scientific theory for centuries until the theory of relativity took its place. He dispelled doubts about the heliocentricity of the Solar System by using his mathematical explanation of gravity to deduce Kepler’s laws of planetary motion, account for tides, comet trajectories, the precession of the equinoxes, and other phenomena. He proved that the same principles could explain the motion of heavenly bodies as well as items on Earth. Most European scientists were persuaded of the superiority of Newtonian mechanics over previous systems after geodetic observations by Maupertuis, La Condamine, and others proved Newton’s deduction that the Earth is an oblate spheroid.
In addition to creating the first useful reflecting telescope, he also created a comprehensive theory of color based on the discovery that white light can be divided into the visible spectrum’s colors by a prism. Published in 1704, his immensely famous book Opticks gathered his work on light. He performed the first theoretical estimate of the speed of sound, proposed the idea of a Newtonian fluid, and developed the empirical rule of cooling, which was the first statement of heat transmission. In addition, he conducted early studies on electricity, and his book Opticks contains a concept that is possibly the origin of the field theory of the electric force.
Apart from his contributions to calculus, he also broadened the application of the binomial theorem to non-integer exponents, devised a technique for estimating function roots, and categorized the majority of cubic plane curves.
Newton was the second Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge in addition to being a fellow of Trinity College. He was a devoted but unconventional Christian who, in private, disapproved of the Trinity theory. Unlike most of the Cambridge academics of the time, he declined to accept holy orders in the Church of England.
Newton spent a great deal of time studying biblical chronology and alchemy in addition to the mathematical sciences, but the majority of his research in those fields was not published until years after his death. Newton, who was personally and politically associated with the Whig party, briefly represented the University of Cambridge in parliament twice, from 1689 to 1690 and from 1701 to 1702.
Following his knighthood by Queen Anne in 1705, he lived in London for the final thirty years of his life, holding positions as president of the Royal Society (1703–1727) and as master (1699–1727) of the Royal Mint.
Early Years
Using the Julian calendar that was in use in England at the time, Isaac Newton was born on Christmas Day, 25 December 1642 (NS 4 January 1643[a]), at Woolsthorpe Manor in the hamlet of Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth, in the county of Lincolnshire. Three months prior, his father, Isaac Newton, had passed away. Newton was a little infant when he was prematurely born; according to his mother Hannah Ayscough, he might have fit inside a quart cup. Newton’s mother remarried when he was three years old and moved in with the Reverend Barnabas Smith. As a result, her son was left in the custody of Margery Ayscough, née Blythe, Newton’s maternal grandmother.
According to this item in a list of crimes done up until the age of 19, Newton detested his stepfather and had some animosity toward his mother for marrying him: “Threatening my father and mother Smith to burn them and the house over them.” Mary, Benjamin, and Hannah were the three children of Newton’s mother’s second marriage.
The King’s School
Newton attended The King’s School in Grantham from around the age of twelve until he was seventeen. There, he learned Latin and Ancient Greek and most likely received a solid foundation in mathematics. By October 1659, his mother had had him out of school and back in Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth. His mother, who had been a widow twice, tried to force him into farming, a career he detested. His mother was convinced to send him back to school by Henry Stokes, the master of The King’s School. Driven in part by a desire for vengeance against a bully in the playground, he rose to the top of the class by making distinctive models of windmills and sundials.
Cambridge University
Newton was accepted into Trinity College, University of Cambridge, in June 1661. Cambridge University received a recommendation from his uncle, the Reverend William Ayscough, who had attended the university. Newton began his time at Cambridge as a subsizar, making ends meet by working as a valet until 1664 when he was granted a fellowship that would pay for his education for an additional four years until he completed his MA. Cambridge’s teachings at the time were based on Aristotle, whom Newton studied with more contemporary philosophers like Descartes and astronomers like Thomas Street and Galileo Galilei. As he discovered it, he jotted down a number of “Quaestiones” about mechanical philosophy in his notebook.
After discovering the generalized binomial theorem in 1665, he started working on a mathematical system that would eventually become calculus. In August 1665, shortly after Newton graduated from Cambridge with a BA, the institution was briefly shuttered to prevent the Great Plague.
Despite his lackluster performance as a Cambridge student, Newton developed his theories on calculus, optics, and the law of gravity throughout the course of the following two years while studying alone at his Woolsthorpe home.
After returning to Cambridge University in April 1667, Newton was chosen as a fellow of Trinity in October. Although it was not strictly enforced during the Restoration period, fellows were nevertheless expected to receive holy orders and be ordained as Anglican priests; an affirmation of adherence to the Church of England was acceptable. He pledged to himself that “I will either set Theology as the object of my studies and will take holy orders when the time prescribed by these statutes [7 years] arrives, or I will resign from the college.” Previously, he had not given religion much attention and had twice affixed his signature to the Thirty-nine Articles, which form the cornerstone of Church of England dogma.
By 1675, it was impossible to ignore the problem, and by then, his unusual opinions were impeding progress.
The Lucasian lecturer Isaac Barrow was pleased by his academic performance and was eager to further his own theological and administrative abilities. Two years later, Barrow became the master of Trinity College. Newton replaced him in 1669, just a year after earning his MA. The Lucasian professorship’s requirements stated that the holder could not occupy any positions in the church, perhaps in order to devote more time to science [weasel words]. King Charles II, whose consent was required, agreed with Newton’s position that this should release him from the ordination requirement. As a result, a confrontation between Newton’s religious beliefs and Anglican orthodoxy was avoided.
Teaching geography was a part of the duties of the Cambridge Lucasian Professor of Mathematics post. An updated, rectified, and improved version of the Geographia Generalis, a geography textbook originally published in 1650 by the then-deceased Bernhardus Varenius, was published by Newton in 1672 and again in 1681.
Varenius saw geography as a combination of science and pure mathematics used to measure Earth’s properties, and he endeavored to provide a theoretical framework in the Geographia Generalis to connect scientific ideas to traditional geography conceptions. Although it’s unknown if Newton actually gave geography lectures, the English translation of the book by Dugdale and Shaw from 1733 said Newton wrote it so pupils might study it while he gave lectures on the topic.
Some people see the Geographia Generalis as the boundary between ancient and modern geography traditions, and its lasting influence is largely attributed to Newton’s contributions to the later volumes.
Middle Age
Calculus
It has been noted that Newton’s contributions “distinctly advance every branch of mathematics then studied.” His work on the topic, often known as calculus or fluxions, is now published among Newton’s mathematical writings. It was first seen in a manuscript dated October 1666. Isaac Barrow described his book De analysi per aequationes numero terminorum infinitas, which he gave to John Collins in June 1669, as the product “of an extraordinary genius and proficiency in these things” in a letter to Collins that same August.
Later on, Newton and Leibniz got into a disagreement about who should have come first in the creation of calculus. The majority of contemporary historians maintain that, although using extremely distinct mathematical notations, Newton and Leibniz independently discovered calculus.
It is accepted, nonetheless, that Newton developed calculus far before Leibniz. The “differential Method” and Leibniz’s notation, which are now regarded as far more practical notations, were embraced by mathematicians in continental Europe and, from around 1820, by those in Britain.
In the Principia itself, Newton demonstrated this using “the method of first and last ratios” and explained why he presented his expositions in this way, adding that “hereby the same thing is performed as by the method of indivisibles.” This is just one example of the extensive use of calculus in geometric form in his work, which is based on limiting values of the ratios of vanishingly small quantities. The Principia has therefore been referred to be “a book dense with the theory and application of the infinitesimal calculus” in contemporary times, and “nearly all of it is of this calculus” in Newton’s day.
He employed techniques involving “one or more orders of the infinitesimally small” in both his writings on motion “during the two decades preceding 1684” and his De motu corporum in gyrum of 1684.
Newton hated debate and criticism, which is why he had been hesitant to publish his calculus. He had a strong relationship with Nicolas Fatio de Duillier, a Swiss mathematician. While writing a revised edition of Newton’s Principia in 1691, Duillier was in touch with Leibniz. The work was never finished because Duillier and Newton’s friendship broke down in 1693. Other Royal Society members[who?] began accusing Leibniz of plagiarism in 1699. When the Royal Society declared in a study that Newton was the real discoverer and called Leibniz a charlatan in 1711, the controversy really got going. It was subsequently discovered that Newton penned the paper’s closing statements on Leibniz.
The generalized binomial theorem, which holds true for any exponent, is widely attributed to Newton. He made significant contributions to the theory of finite differences, discovered Newton’s identities and method, classified cubic plane curves (polynomials of degree three in two variables), and was the first to use coordinate geometry and fractional indices to derive solutions to Diophantine equations. He was the first to utilize power series with confidence and to revert power series. He also approximated partial sums of the harmonic series using logarithms (a forerunner to Euler’s summation technique). Simon Stevin’s decimals served as an inspiration for Newton’s work on infinite series.
Optical
Even when the light beam entering the prism is circular, Newton noted in 1666 that the spectrum of colors departing the prism at the place of least deviation is oblong. This means that the prism refracts distinct colors by different angles. This led him to the conclusion that color is an intrinsic quality of light, which was previously up for discussion.
Newton gave lectures on optics from 1670 until 1672. During this time, he studied light refraction and proved that a lens and a second prism could combine to create white light from the multicolored image created by a prism, which he called a spectrum. Current research has shown that corpuscular alchemy is a source of inspiration for Newton’s resynthesis and study of white light.
By splitting off a colored beam and shining it on different objects, he demonstrated how colored light does not change its characteristics and that the color of the light does not change whether it is reflected, dispersed, or transmitted. He concluded that rather than things creating color on their own, color results from objects interacting with already-colored light. Newton’s theory of color refers to this.
Based on his research, he deduced that every refracting telescope’s lens would experience chromatic aberration or the dispersion of light into different colors. He built a telescope using reflecting mirrors in place of lenses as a demonstration of the idea to get around that issue. In order to construct the first working reflecting telescope, or Newtonian telescope as it is now called, the issue of finding an appropriate mirror material and shaping method had to be resolved. Newton used his rings to gauge the quality of the optics in his telescopes and ground his own mirrors from a specially composed highly reflecting speculum metal. He succeeded in creating this first reflecting telescope at the end of 1668.
It had a longer, sharper picture and was almost eight inches in length. His reflecting telescope was requested to be demonstrated for the Royal Society in 1671. His notes, Of Colours, which he eventually developed into the opus Opticks, were published as a result of their curiosity. Newton was so angered when Robert Hooke criticized several of his theories that he stopped participating in public discussions.
A brief correspondence ensued between Hooke and Newton in 1679–1680. Hooke had been appointed to oversee the correspondence of the Royal Society. He opened up a correspondence with the goal of encouraging Newton to contribute to Royal Society transactions. This ultimately encouraged Newton to devise a proof that the elliptical form of planetary orbits would arise from a centripetal force inversely proportional to the square of the radius vector. But until Hooke’s passing, the two men had a typically tense relationship.
According to Newton, light is made up of corpuscles, or particles, that accelerate into denser media and then undergo refractive amplification. In order to explain the recurring pattern of reflection and transmission by thin films, he almost used soundlike waves (Opticks Bk. II, Props. 12), but he stuck with his hypothesis of “fits” that determined whether a corpuscle would be reflected or transmitted (Props. 13). Later physicists, however, preferred to explain the interference patterns and the broader phenomena of diffraction in terms of a completely wavelike explanation of light. The concepts of wave-particle duality, photons, and quantum mechanics of today are hardly similar to Newton’s theories of light.
Newton proposed the presence of the ether to transfer forces between particles in his 1675 Hypothesis of Light. His interest in alchemy was rekindled by his correspondence with Henry More, the Cambridge Platonist philosopher. Based on Hermetic concepts of particle attraction and repulsion, he substituted occult forces for the ether. According to John Maynard Keynes, who studied alchemy and obtained many of Newton’s publications, “Newton was not the first of the age of reason: He was the last of the magicians.” It is impossible to separate Newton’s interest in alchemy from his contributions to science. This occurred during a period when the lines separating alchemy and science were blurry.
Newton outlined his corpuscular theory of light in his 1704 book Opticks. He postulated that through a sort of alchemical transmutation, “Are not gross Bodies and Light convertible into one another,… and may not Bodies receive much of their Activity from the Particles of Light which enter their Composition?” He believed that light was composed of incredibly subtle corpuscles, while ordinary matter was composed of grosser corpuscles. Newton also used a glass globe to create an early version of a frictional electrostatic generator.
Newton was the first to illustrate the usage of multiple-prism arrays and a design utilizing a prism as a beam expander in his book Opticks. Multiple-prism beam expanders played a key role in the invention of narrow-linewidth tunable lasers, some 278 years after Newton’s debate. The multiple-prism dispersion theory was also influenced by the application of these prismatic beam expanders.
Many things have changed since Newton. Young and Fresnel demonstrated that color is the observable representation of light’s wavelength by rejecting Huygens’ wave theory and Newton’s particle theory. Additionally, science gradually began to understand the distinction between mathematized optics and color perception. Goethe, a German poet and scientist, was unable to undermine the Newtonian basis, but he was able to identify one weakness in Newton’s defense: Newton had dedicated his life to the theory that colorless refraction was impossible. He consequently believed that since achromatism and refraction are incompatible, telescope object glasses must always be defective. Dollond demonstrated the error of this reasoning.”
Gravitation
As early as 1665, Newton was working on his theory of gravity. Newton resumed his study of celestial mechanics in 1679, this time examining gravity and how it affects planet orbits in relation to Kepler’s equations of planetary motion. This was prompted by a brief communication with Hooke in 1679–1680 after the latter was named Secretary of the Royal Society. The purpose of the correspondence was to get Newton to contribute to Royal Society transactions. A comet that appeared in the winter of 1680–1681 stimulated Newton’s rekindled interest in astronomy even more, and he communicated with John Flamsteed about it.
Following their conversations with Hooke, Newton developed a demonstration showing that a centripetal force inversely equal to the square of the radius vector would cause planetary orbits to take on an elliptical shape. In a tract titled “De motu corporum in gyrum,” which was written on around nine sheets and recorded into the Royal Society’s Register Book in December 1684, Newton shared his findings with Edmond Halley and the Royal Society. This tract served as the foundation upon which Newton built and enlarged the Principia.
On July 5, 1687, The Principia was published thanks to financial support and encouragement from Halley. Newton outlined the three universal laws of motion in this book. The basis of classical mechanics is laid by these rules, which collectively explain the relationship between any object, the forces acting upon it, and the motion that results. They made significant contributions to the Industrial Revolution’s numerous advancements, which were quickly followed by more than 200 years of stagnation. Non-relativistic technology in the contemporary world are still largely based on these advancements. He developed the rule of universal gravitation and gave the phenomenon that would come to be known as gravity the Latin name gravitas, which means weight.
Newton explained in the same work how to use ‘first and last ratios’ to do geometrical analysis in a way that was similar to calculus, how to determine the speed of sound in air using Boyle’s law, how to infer the oblateness of the Earth’s spheroidal figure, how to explain the precession of the equinoxes due to the Moon’s gravitational attraction on the Earth, how to begin studying the irregularities in the Moon’s motion, how to determine a comet’s orbit and much more.
David Brewster, Newton’s biographer, stated that Newton’s health suffered as a result of the difficulty of applying his theory of gravity to the motion of the moon: “He was deprived of his appetite and sleep” while working on the issue in 1692–1693 and told astronomer John Machin that “his head never ached but when he was studying the subject.” Brewster claims that Edmund Halley also mentioned to John Conduitt that Newton “always replied that it made his head ache, and kept him awake so often, that he would think of it no more” when asked to finish his analysis.
By recognizing the “deviation of the Sun” from the Solar System’s center of gravity as early as the mid-1680s, Newton established his heliocentric theory of the Solar System, which was rather recent. Newton believed that “the common center of gravity of the Earth, the Sun, and all the Planets is to be esteem’d the Centre of the World,” and that this center of gravity “either is at rest or moves uniformly forward in a right line.” Rather than being the precise center of the Sun or any other body that could be considered at rest. (In light of the widespread agreement that the center, wherever it was, was at rest, Newton chose the “at rest” option.)
Because of his theory of an unseen force with the capacity to act across great distances, Newton came under fire for allegedly bringing “occult agencies” into science. Newton later strongly refuted these criticisms in a concluding General Scholium in the second edition of the Principia (1713), writing that it was sufficient that the phenomena implied a gravitational attraction, which they did, but that they did not yet indicate its cause, and that it was improper and unnecessary to frame hypotheses about things that the phenomena did not imply. (This is where Newton first used the now-famous phrase “Hypotheses non fingo”).
Newton gained recognition on a global scale after publishing the Principia. Among his circle of admirers was the mathematician Nicolas Fatio de Duillier, who was born in Switzerland.
Of the 78 “species” of cubic curves, Newton identified 72 in 1710 and divided them into four groups. James Stirling demonstrated in 1717—possibly with Newton’s assistance—that each cubic was one of these four varieties. Four years after his death, in 1731, Newton’s other claim—that the four kinds could be created by plane projection from one of them—was verified.
Later Years
Royal Mint
Newton penned several theological pamphlets in the 1690s that addressed both the literal and symbolic reading of the Bible. Unpublished until 1785 was a document that Newton wrote to John Locke disputing the faithfulness of 1 John 5:7—the Johannine Comma—and its loyalty to the early copies of the New Testament.
Newton served as a representative for Cambridge University in the English Parliament in 1689 and 1701, however, other reports claim that his sole remarks were a complaint about a chilly draft in the room and a request that the window be closed. However, Abraham de la Pryme, a Cambridge diarist, said that he chastised pupils who were disturbing the neighborhood by asserting that a property was haunted.
Under King William III’s reign, in 1696, Newton relocated to London to assume the role of warden of the Royal Mint. This appointment was made possible by the support of Charles Montagu, 1st Earl of Halifax, who was then Chancellor of the Exchequer. Taking command of England’s great retreat, he stepped on the toes of Lord Lucas, Governor of the Tower, and got Edmond Halley a temporary position as deputy comptroller of the Chester branch. During the latter thirty years of his life, Newton served as Master of the Mint, and after Thomas Neale’s death in 1699, he became arguably the most well-known Master of the Mint. Although Newton took these posts seriously, they were meant to be sinecures.
After leaving his position at Cambridge in 1701, he used his power to restructure the money and penalize counterfeiters and cutters.
In his capacity as the Royal Mint’s Warden and then Master, Newton calculated that 20 percent of the coins received during the Great Recoinage of 1696 were fake. High treason was defined as counterfeiting, which carried a death sentence of drawing, quartering, and hanging. Even so, it may be quite challenging to convict even the most egregious offenders, but Newton was up to the challenge.
Clad as a frequent patron of pubs and taverns, he himself collected a large portion of that proof. Even with all the obstacles to prosecution and divisions between the arms of government, English law had strong, venerable traditions of power. In each of the home counties, Newton had appointed himself as a judge of the peace. Newton must have been making revisions to his first edition of Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica at the time, as it contains a draft letter on the subject. Then, between June 1698 and Christmas 1699, he cross-examined witnesses, informants, and suspects over a hundred times. Newton brought 28 coiners to justice with success.
In 1703, Newton received the title of associate of the French Académie des Sciences and president of the Royal Society. As a member of the Royal Society, Newton antagonized the Royal Astronomer John Flamsteed by releasing Flamsteed’s Historia Coelestis Britannica ahead of schedule, which Newton had utilized for research.
Chivalry
Newton was knighted by Queen Anne in April 1705 while on a royal visit to Trinity College, Cambridge. It is more likely that political factors related to the May 1705 parliamentary election drove the knighthood than any appreciation of Newton’s contributions to science or his role as Master of the Mint. Following Francis Bacon, Newton was the second scientist to receive a knighthood.
A report that Newton submitted to the Lords Commissioners of His Majesty’s Treasury on September 21, 1717, led to a change in the bimetallic relationship between gold and silver coins. A royal proclamation on December 22, 1717, prohibited the exchange of gold guineas for any amount greater than twenty-one silver shillings. Because imports were paid for with silver coins and exports were paid for with gold, this unintentionally caused a scarcity of silver and transferred Britain from the silver standard to its first gold standard. Whether or whether this was what he planned to achieve is up for discussion. There has been a contention that Newton saw his job at the Mint as an extension of his alchemical investigations.
When the South Sea Company failed in about 1720, Newton lost about £20,000 (or £4.4 million in 2020) from his investment in the company.
Newton lived with his niece and her husband at Cranbury Park, close to Winchester, towards the end of his life, until his passing. At his London home on Jermyn Street, his half-niece Catherine Barton hosted social events as his hostess; in a letter to her during her smallpox recovery, he described himself as her “very loving Uncle”.
Death
On March 20, 1727, Newton passed away peacefully in his sleep in London (OS 20 March 1726; NS 31 March 1727).[A] He was buried at Westminster Abbey alongside kings and queens after receiving a state burial that was attended by aristocrats, scientists, and philosophers. He was buried at the abbey as the first scientist. It’s possible Voltaire attended his funeral. As a bachelor, he passed away intestate after giving up a large portion of his estate to family members in his final years. John Conduitt and Catherine Barton received his papers.
A plaster death mask of Newton was constructed soon after his passing. The sculpture of Newton was created by Flemish artist John Michael Rysbrack using it. The Royal Society now owns it; in 2012, they produced a 3D image of it.
Mercury was discovered in Newton’s hair after his death, most likely as a result of his alchemical experiments. Mercury poisoning may be the cause of Newton’s eccentricities in his latter years.
Individuality
Newton never married, despite rumors that he was once engaged[b]. When it came to Newton’s final hours, the surgeon and doctor who attended to him assured the French writer and philosopher Voltaire—who was in London at the time—that he “was never sensible to any passion, was not subject to the common frailties of mankind, nor had any commerce with women.” Many authors, including mathematician Charles Hutton, economist John Maynard Keynes, and scientist Carl Sagan, have discussed the popular idea that Newton died a virgin.
After meeting the Swiss mathematician Nicolas Fatio de Duillier in London in 1689, Newton became good friends with him; a portion of their correspondence has survived. In 1693, their relationship came to a sudden and mysterious end, and simultaneously, Newton experienced a mental breakdown that included furious letters of accusation directed at his pals John Locke and Samuel Pepys. He accused Locke of trying to “embroil” him with “women & by other means” in his message to the latter.
In a February 1676 letter to Robert Hooke, Newton expressed his modesty about his accomplishments, saying, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” According to two authors, the line was not so much a declaration of modesty as it was an indirect jab at Hooke (who was supposedly small and hunchbacked), written during a period when Hooke and Newton were at odds over optical discoveries.
Alternatively, the well-known adage about standing on the shoulders of giants was first recorded in the seventeenth century by the poet George Herbert, a fellow of Trinity College and former Cambridge orator. Herbert’s Jacula Prudentum (1651) contained the main idea that “a dwarf on a giant’s shoulders sees farther of the two,” so using this proverb as an analogy would make Newton the “dwarf” rather than Hooke.
In a subsequent memoir, Newton wrote, “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.”
