As Sir Isaac Newton once said, “If I’ve seen farther than others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.” Referring to his great insight, this quote resonated throughout the world after Newton’s death. Newton was a significant scientist, philosopher, and author. Composing books such as Opticks and Principia, he left a resounding impact on not only the world of science, but also in the field of philosophy. Newton established breakthrough theories of planetary motion and the colored spectrum. He directly contradicted the established beliefs during his time. Therefore, it is easy to say that Sir Isaac Newton forever changed people’s understanding of the world around them.
Newton was born on January 1643 in England. [2] He arrived in this world only three months after the death of his biological father. Because he was so tiny at birth, Newton was expected to die as an infant. [3] When Newton was three, his mother remarried and moved with her new spouse, leaving Newton in the care of his maternal grandmother. Upon the death of Newton’s stepfather, Newton’s mother removed him from The King’s School, with the intention of teaching him to manage her estate instead. With strong protest from Newton, his family agreed that he should become educated and go to university. In 1661, he was accepted into Trinity College, Cambridge. [4] At that time, the school’s teachings were based on those of Aristotle, but Newton preferred more advanced studies, such as those of René Descartes and Robert Boyle, whose teachings were more based on philosophy than science. In the midst of his education, the plague struck England around 1667, causing the closing of Cambridge for two years. Newton referred to the time as “the prime of my age for invention.” Newton prepared Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica or Principia, possibly his most well known work. [7] The compilation was eventually published more than 20 years after Newton originally wrote it, in 1687.
Upon finishing his education at Cambridge, he was elected as a Fellow of Trinity College in 1667. In 1669, Newton became a Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, which required such a professor to be as a priest, yet Newton’s religious views were far from those of a priest. Newton managed to receive the award, without pursuing a career in religion. [8] As an opponent of the efforts of King James II to make universities into Catholic institutions, Newton was elected to the Convention Parliament to represent Cambridge in 1689. In addition, Newton was made master of the Mint in 1699.
Newton’s mathematical work has been said to distinctly advance every branch of mathematics, creating major developments. Within mathematics, Newton is majorly known for his work in gravitation. In 1666, Newton imagined that Earth’s gravity extended to the Moon, counterbalancing its centrifugal force, or center fleeing force. He found this result using his law of centrifugal force and a hybrid of Kepler’s third law of planetary motion, defining the relationship between the orbital periods and the distances of the planets from the Sun.[9] Using the same logic, Newton found that the centripetal force, or center seeking force, of any planet must decrease as the inverse square of its distance from the center of its motion. An example of this is if the distance from a planet center is tripled, then the force emitted from that planet becomes 1/3 of its original force. When modern measurements were compared to Newton’s estimations, he was within a remarkable 11% margin of error. [10]
Newton made insights in the fields of optics and gravity, yet he also greatly advanced calculus. [11] More specifically, Newton examined the infinite series, a form of calculus, and its affects. Newton became involved in the controversy over the true founder of infinitesimal calculus, the main portion of the infinite series concerning finding slopes of curves and areas under curves. Historians believe that both Newton and a colleague by the name of Gottried Leibniz, founded this form of calculus collaboratively. Newton’s findings were published in Principia Book I in 1687. Another one of Newton’s works, titled De motu corporum in gyrum, or on the motion of bodies in orbit, published in 1684, also mentions Newton’s findings in the field of infinitesimal calculus. When Newton was convinced to publish Pricipia, he was credited with the true discovery of the calculus. As a result, the Royal Society proclaimed Leibniz a fraud and concluded that it was in fact Newton who founded the field. [12]
It can be argued that Newton’s most well known work was in the field of gravitation. Although Newton did not bring many new ideas to discussion, he expanded greatly on theories that had already been proven, such as those by Kepler. In 1679, Newton was primarily studying celestial mechanics like gravitation and its effect on the orbit of planets. Even though Newton began research in the years that the plague postponed his education at Cambridge, around 1680, Newton greatly expanded on that research. Newton was under the impression that the Earth’s gravity might be caused by an action similar to that found in whirlpools.. Robert Hooke, an adversary of Newton suggested that the centripetal force drawing planets to the Sun should vary as the inverse square of their distance from it. Newton realized Hooke was correct, and mathematically proved the theory, as Hooke could not. With the convincing of a young astronomer in 1684, Newton agreed to publish Hooke’s mathematically proven law. After waiting three years to add more research, finally, in 1687, Newton published the Principia series, which included his mathematical calculations of Hooke’s law.
In 1704, Newton published Opticks, his most influential work. The book was written during the years from 1675 to 1703. Newton disappeared from the public spotlight in order to finish the compilation and to recover from his dispute with Leibniz, settled by the Royal Society. [13] Newton’s initial lectures as Lucasian professor dealt with optics. He discussed his revolutionary conclusion that white light contained all of the colors of the spectrum, ROYGBIV (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet). In addition, Newton created theories of refraction, or the bending of light. [14] Stating that when a beam of light enters a medium in which the beam’s velocity differs from that in its original medium, the path of the beam changes. [15] With respect to white light, Newton found that such light is a mixture of different types of rays and that such rays are refracted at slightly different angles. Newton hypothesized that these rays are responsible for producing a given color of the spectrum. In Newton’s most famous experiment, the “Crucial Experiment”, he confirmed his hypothesis. [16] Newton’s conclusions directly contradicted the current theory in 1704, which concluded that all rays of white light are equally refracted. Newton clearly made an impact in the study of optics with his research.
From these discoveries in the area of optics, Newton improved the telescope. He was led to the conclusion that telescopes using a refracting lenses, could never bypass distortions from dispersion of light. Therefore, Newton constructed the first reflecting telescope. This telescope was capable of more clearly viewing celestial bodies.
Newton shared his discoveries and insights with the world by publishing Opticks and expanded on old theories with Principia. Discovering errors with old principles, he trounced established beliefs and affected the fields or religion and philosophy with his innovative ideas. Newton was prescient, he had seen farther than others, and because of it, he changed the world forever.
[2] Alfred Rupert Hall, “Isaac Newton’s Life,” in Isaac Newton Institute
for Mathematical Sciences (Microsoft Corp., 1998), accessed March 18, 2011, last
modified 1998, http://www.newton.ac.uk/newtlife.html.
[3] J.A Schuster, “Sir Isaac Newton,” in Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia
(Grolier Online), accessed April 13, 2011, http://gme.grolier.com/
article?assetid=0207780-0.
[4] Ibid
[7] Hall, “Isaac Newton’s Life”
[8] Sir Isaac Newton (1643-1727) (Grolier Online), s.v. “The New Book of
Popular Science,” accessed April 13, 2011, http://nbps.grolier.com/cgi-bin/
article?assetid=4446025&templaten ame=/bios/bios_scientist.html.
[9] J. M. A, Danby “Kepler’s Laws.” Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia. Grolier Online http://gme.grolier.com/article?assetid=0159220-0 (accessed April 13, 2011).
[10] J.A Schuster, “Sir Isaac Newton,”
[11] Isaac Newton Sir, Principia: Book I: Of the Motion of Bodies, trans.
Andrew Motte (1687), accessed March 17, 2011,
[12] Sir Isaac Newton (1643-1727) (Grolier Online)
[13] J.A Schuster, “Sir Isaac Newton,” in Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia
(Grolier Online), accessed April 13, 2011, http://gme.grolier.com/
article?assetid=0207780-0.
[14] Sir Isaac, Newton, Opticks (1704), accessed March 18, 2011,
http://www.newton.ac.uk/newtlife.html.
[15] Mark S., Vogel “Refraction.” Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia. Grolier Online http://gme.grolier.com/article?assetid=0244410-0 (accessed April 15, 2011).
[16] J.A Schuster, “Sir Isaac Newton,”