107 Facts About Isaac Newton

Isaac Newton made seminal contributions to optics, and shares credit with German mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz for formulating infinitesimal calculus, though he developed calculus years before Leibniz.

Isaac Newton contributed to and refined the scientific method, and his work is considered the most influential in bringing forth modern science.

Isaac 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.

Isaac Newton solved the two-body problem, and introduced the three-body problem.

Isaac Newton demonstrated that the motion of objects on Earth and celestial bodies could be accounted for by the same principles.

Isaac Newton was the first to calculate the age of Earth by experiment, and described a precursor to the modern wind tunnel.

Isaac Newton built the first reflecting telescope and developed a sophisticated theory of colour based on the observation that a prism separates white light into the colours of the visible spectrum.

Isaac Newton originated prisms as beam expanders and multiple-prism arrays, which would later become integral to the development of tunable lasers.

Isaac Newton further formulated an empirical law of cooling, which was the first heat transfer formulation and serves as the formal basis of convective heat transfer, made the first theoretical calculation of the speed of sound, and introduced the notions of a Newtonian fluid and a black body.

Isaac Newton was the first to explain the Magnus effect.

Isaac Newton further initiated the field of calculus of variations, devised an early form of regression analysis, and was a pioneer of vector analysis.

Isaac Newton was a fellow of Trinity College and the second Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge; he was appointed at the age of 26.

Isaac Newton was a devout but unorthodox Christian who privately rejected the doctrine of the Trinity.

Isaac Newton refused to take holy orders in the Church of England, unlike most members of the Cambridge faculty of the day.

Beyond his work on the mathematical sciences, Isaac Newton dedicated much of his time to the study of alchemy and biblical chronology, but most of his work in those areas remained unpublished until long after his death.

Isaac Newton was knighted by Queen Anne in 1705 and spent the last three decades of his life in London, serving as Warden and Master of the Royal Mint, in which he increased the accuracy and security of British coinage, as well as the president of the Royal Society.

Isaac Newton's father, named Isaac Newton, had died three months before.

When Isaac Newton was three, his mother remarried and went to live with her new husband, the Reverend Barnabas Smith, leaving her son in the care of his maternal grandmother, Margery Ayscough.

At Cambridge, Isaac Newton started as a subsizar, paying his way by performing valet duties until he was awarded a scholarship in 1664, which covered his university costs for four more years until the completion of his MA.

At the time, Cambridge's teachings were based on those of Aristotle, whom Isaac Newton read along with then more modern philosophers, including Rene Descartes and astronomers such as Galileo Galilei and Thomas Street.

Isaac Newton set down in his notebook a series of "Quaestiones" about mechanical philosophy as he found it.

Isaac Newton has been described as an "exceptionally organized" person when it came to note-taking, further dog-earing pages he saw as important.

Isaac Newton argued that this should exempt him from the ordination requirement, and King Charles II, whose permission was needed, accepted this argument; thus, a conflict between Isaac Newton's religious views and Anglican orthodoxy was averted.

In 1672, and again in 1681, Isaac Newton published a revised, corrected, and amended edition of the Geographia Generalis, a geography textbook first published in 1650 by the then-deceased Bernhardus Varenius.

Isaac Newton was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1672.

Isaac Newton's work has been said "to distinctly advance every branch of mathematics then studied".

Isaac Newton later became involved in a dispute with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz over priority in the development of calculus.

However, it is established that Isaac Newton came to develop calculus much earlier than Leibniz.

Historian of science A Rupert Hall notes that while Leibniz deserves credit for his independent formulation of calculus, Newton was undoubtedly the first to develop it, stating:.

Isaac Newton had been reluctant to publish his calculus because he feared controversy and criticism.

Isaac Newton was close to the Swiss mathematician Nicolas Fatio de Duillier.

In 1693, the relationship between Duillier and Isaac Newton deteriorated and the book was never completed.

The dispute then broke out in full force in 1711 when the Royal Society proclaimed in a study that it was Isaac Newton who was the true discoverer and labelled Leibniz a fraud; it was later found that Isaac Newton wrote the study's concluding remarks on Leibniz.

Isaac Newton is credited with the generalised binomial theorem, valid for any exponent.

Isaac Newton discovered Newton's identities, Newton's method, classified cubic plane curves, is a founder of the theory of Cremona transformations, made substantial contributions to the theory of finite differences, with Newton regarded as "the single most significant contributor to finite difference interpolation", with many formulas created by Newton.

Isaac Newton was the first to state Bezout's theorem, and was the first to use fractional indices and to employ coordinate geometry to derive solutions to Diophantine equations.

Isaac Newton approximated partial sums of the harmonic series by logarithms and was the first to use power series with confidence and to revert power series.

Isaac Newton initiated the field of calculus of variations, being the first to clearly formulate and correctly solve a problem in the field, that being Newton's minimal resistance problem, which he posed and solved in 1685, and then later published in Principia in 1687.

Isaac Newton then used calculus of variations in his solving of the brachistochrone curve problem in 1697, which was posed by Johann Bernoulli in 1696, thus he pioneered the field with his work on the two problems.

Isaac Newton was a pioneer of vector analysis, as he demonstrated how to apply the parallelogram law for adding various physical quantities and realized that these quantities could be broken down into components in any direction.

In 1666, Isaac Newton observed that the spectrum of colours exiting a prism in the position of minimum deviation is oblong, even when the light ray entering the prism is circular, which is to say, the prism refracts different colours by different angles.

Isaac Newton showed that coloured light does not change its properties by separating out a coloured beam and shining it on various objects, and that regardless of whether reflected, scattered, or transmitted, the light remains the same colour.

Isaac Newton grounded his own mirrors out of a custom composition of highly reflective speculum metal, using Newton's rings to judge the quality of the optics for his telescopes.

Isaac Newton argued that light is composed of particles or corpuscles, which were refracted by accelerating into a denser medium.

Isaac Newton replaced the ether with occult forces based on Hermetic ideas of attraction and repulsion between particles.

In 1704, Isaac Newton published Opticks, in which he expounded his corpuscular theory of light, and included a set of queries at the end, which were posed as unanswered questions and positive assertions.

Isaac Newton investigated electricity by constructing a primitive form of a frictional electrostatic generator using a glass globe, and detailed an experiment in 1675 that showed when one side of a glass sheet is rubbed to create an electric charge, it attracts "light bodies" to the opposite side.

Isaac Newton interpreted this as evidence that electric forces could pass through glass.

Isaac Newton recognized the crucial role of electricity in nature, believing it to be responsible for various phenomena, including the emission, reflection, refraction, inflection, and heating effects of light.

Isaac Newton proposed that electricity was involved in the sensations experienced by the human body, affecting everything from muscle movement to brain function.

Isaac Newton provided both experimental and theoretical explanations for the effect using a mechanical model.

Isaac Newton had committed himself to the doctrine that refraction without colour was impossible.

Isaac Newton had been developing his theory of gravitation as far back as 1665.

Isaac Newton used the Latin word gravitas for the effect that would become known as gravity, and defined the law of universal gravitation.

Isaac Newton's work achieved the first great unification in physics.

Isaac Newton solved the two-body problem, and introduced the three-body problem.

For Isaac Newton, it was not precisely the centre of the Sun or any other body that could be considered at rest, but rather "the common centre of gravity of the Earth, the Sun and all the Planets is to be esteem'd the Centre of the World", and this centre of gravity "either is at rest or moves uniformly forward in a right line".

Isaac Newton was criticised for introducing "occult agencies" into science because of his postulate of an invisible force able to act over vast distances.

Later, in the second edition of the Principia, Isaac Newton firmly rejected such criticisms in a concluding General Scholium, writing that it was enough that the phenomena implied a gravitational attraction, as they did; but they did not so far indicate its cause, and it was both unnecessary and improper to frame hypotheses of things that were not implied by the phenomena.

Isaac Newton acquired a circle of admirers, including the Swiss-born mathematician Nicolas Fatio de Duillier.

However, a 1690s manuscript later analyzed showed that Isaac Newton had identified all 78 cubic curves, but chose not to publish the remaining six for unknown reasons.

In 1717, and probably with Isaac Newton's help, James Stirling proved that every cubic was one of these four types.

Isaac Newton claimed that the four types could be obtained by plane projection from one of them, and this was proved in 1731, four years after his death.

Isaac Newton studied heat and energy flow, formulating an empirical law of cooling which states that the rate at which an object cools is proportional to the temperature difference between the object and its surrounding environment.

Isaac Newton discussed the circular motion of fluids and was the first to discuss Couette flow.

Isaac Newton was the first to observe and explain the Magnus effect in 1672 after observing tennis players at Cambridge college.

Isaac Newton went on to posit that if there is no data to explain a finding, one should simply wait for that data, rather than guessing at an explanation.

Isaac Newton was a member of the Parliament of England for Cambridge University in 1689 and 1701, but according to some accounts his only comments were to complain about a cold draught in the chamber and request that the window be closed.

Isaac Newton was noted by Cambridge diarist Abraham de la Pryme to have rebuked students who were frightening locals by claiming that a house was haunted.

Isaac Newton moved to London to take up the post of warden of the Royal Mint during the reign of King William III in 1696, a position that he had obtained through the patronage of Charles Montagu, 1st Earl of Halifax, then Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Isaac Newton took charge of England's great recoining, trod on the toes of Lord Lucas, Governor of the Tower, and secured the job of deputy comptroller of the temporary Chester branch for Edmond Halley.

Isaac Newton retired from his Cambridge duties in 1701, and exercised his authority to reform the currency and punish clippers and counterfeiters.

Isaac Newton had himself made a justice of the peace in all the home counties.

Isaac Newton was made president of the Royal Society in 1703 and an associate of the French Academie des Sciences.

Isaac Newton was the second scientist to be knighted, after Francis Bacon.

Toward the end of his life, Isaac Newton took up residence at Cranbury Park, near Winchester, with his niece and her husband, until his death.

Isaac Newton was given a ceremonial funeral, attended by nobles, scientists, and philosophers, and was buried in Westminster Abbey among kings and queens.

Isaac Newton was the first scientist to be buried in the abbey.

Isaac Newton's papers went to John Conduitt and Catherine Barton.

Isaac Newton's hair was posthumously examined and found to contain mercury, probably resulting from his alchemical pursuits.

Isaac Newton had a close friendship with the Swiss mathematician Nicolas Fatio de Duillier, whom he met in London around 1689; some of their correspondence has survived.

Over half of what Isaac Newton wrote concerned theology and alchemy, and most has never been printed.

Isaac Newton's writings show extensive knowledge of early Church texts and reveal that he sided with Arius, who rejected the conventional view of the Trinity and was the losing party in the conflict with Athanasius over the Creed.

Isaac Newton tried unsuccessfully to obtain one of the two fellowships that exempted the holder from the ordination requirement.

Isaac Newton hid his faith so well that scholars are still unraveling his personal beliefs.

Isaac Newton wrote works on textual criticism, most notably An Historical Account of Two Notable Corruptions of Scripture and Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St John.

Isaac Newton believed in a rationally immanent world, but he rejected the hylozoism implicit in Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Baruch Spinoza.

Isaac Newton saw evidence of design in the system of the world: "Such a wonderful uniformity in the planetary system must be allowed the effect of choice".

Isaac Newton had not, it seems, sufficient foresight to make it a perpetual motion.

Isaac Newton's position was defended by his follower Samuel Clarke in a famous correspondence.

The contrast between Laplace's mechanistic worldview and Isaac Newton's one is the most strident considering the famous answer which the French scientist gave Napoleon, who had criticised him for the absence of the Creator in the Mecanique celeste: "Sire, j'ai pu me passer de cette hypothese".

Scholars long debated whether Isaac Newton disputed the doctrine of the Trinity.

Isaac Newton gave Boyle's ideas their completion through mathematical proofs and, perhaps more importantly, was very successful in popularising them.

Isaac Newton was the last of the magicians, the last of the Babylonians and Sumerians, the last great mind which looked out on the visible and intellectual world with the same eyes as those who began to build our intellectual inheritance rather less than 10,000 years ago.

Isaac Newton, a posthumous child born with no father on Christmas Day, 1642, was the last wonderchild to whom the Magi could do sincere and appropriate homage.

All of Newton's known writings on alchemy are currently being put online in a project undertaken by Indiana University: "The Chymistry of Isaac Newton" and has been summarised in a book.

Yet there is another, more mysterious side to Isaac Newton that is imperfectly known, a realm of activity that spanned some thirty years of his life, although he kept it largely hidden from his contemporaries and colleagues.

The philosopher and historian David Hume declared that Isaac Newton was "the greatest and rarest genius that ever arose for the ornament and instruction of the species".

Physicist Peter Rowlands notes that Isaac Newton was "possibly possessed of the most powerful intellect in the whole of human history".

Isaac Newton's work is considered the most influential in bringing forth modern science.

The French physicist and mathematician Jean-Baptiste Biot praised Isaac Newton's genius, stating that:.

Isaac Newton placed sixth in the 100 Greatest Britons poll conducted by BBC in 2002.

Isaac Newton was voted as the greatest Cantabrigian by University of Cambridge students in 2009.

Isaac Newton demonstrated that if the force decreased with the inverse square of the distance, one could calculate the Moon's orbital period with good accuracy.

Isaac Newton guessed the same force was responsible for other orbital motions, and hence named it "universal gravitation".

The monument features a figure of Isaac Newton reclining on top of a sarcophagus, his right elbow resting on several of his great books and his left hand pointing to a scroll with a mathematical design.

Isaac Newton was shown on the reverse of the notes holding a book and accompanied by a telescope, a prism and a map of the Solar System.