All his spare time was spent reading from the modern philosophers. The result was a less-than-stellar performance, but one that is understandable, given his dual course of study. It was during this time that Newton kept a second set of notes, entitled "Quaestiones Quaedam Philosophicae" "Certain Philosophical Questions". The "Quaestiones" reveal that Newton had discovered the new concept of nature that provided the framework for the Scientific Revolution.
Though Newton graduated without honors or distinctions, his efforts won him the title of scholar and four years of financial support for future education. In , the bubonic plague that was ravaging Europe had come to Cambridge, forcing the university to close. After a two-year hiatus, Newton returned to Cambridge in and was elected a minor fellow at Trinity College, as he was still not considered a standout scholar. In the ensuing years, his fortune improved. Newton received his Master of Arts degree in , before he was During this time, he came across Nicholas Mercator's published book on methods for dealing with infinite series.
Newton quickly wrote a treatise, De Analysi , expounding his own wider-ranging results. He shared this with friend and mentor Isaac Barrow, but didn't include his name as author. In August , Barrow identified its author to Collins as "Mr. Newton's work was brought to the attention of the mathematics community for the first time.
Shortly afterward, Barrow resigned his Lucasian professorship at Cambridge, and Newton assumed the chair. Newton made discoveries in optics, motion and mathematics. Newton theorized that white light was a composite of all colors of the spectrum, and that light was composed of particles. His momentous book on physics, Principia , contains information on nearly all of the essential concepts of physics except energy, ultimately helping him to explain the laws of motion and the theory of gravity.
Along with mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, Newton is credited for developing essential theories of calculus. Newton's first major public scientific achievement was designing and constructing a reflecting telescope in As a professor at Cambridge, Newton was required to deliver an annual course of lectures and chose optics as his initial topic.
He used his telescope to study optics and help prove his theory of light and color. The Royal Society asked for a demonstration of his reflecting telescope in , and the organization's interest encouraged Newton to publish his notes on light, optics and color in Sir Isaac Newton contemplates the force of gravity, as the famous story goes, on seeing an apple fall in his orchard, circa Between and , Newton returned home from Trinity College to pursue his private study, as school was closed due to the Great Plague.
Legend has it that, at this time, Newton experienced his famous inspiration of gravity with the falling apple. According to this common myth, Newton was sitting under an apple tree when a fruit fell and hit him on the head, inspiring him to suddenly come up with the theory of gravity. While there is no evidence that the apple actually hit Newton on the head, he did see an apple fall from a tree, leading him to wonder why it fell straight down and not at an angle.
Consequently, he began exploring the theories of motion and gravity. It was during this month hiatus as a student that Newton conceived many of his most important insights—including the method of infinitesimal calculus, the foundations for his theory of light and color, and the laws of planetary motion—that eventually led to the publication of his physics book Principia and his theory of gravity. In , following 18 months of intense and effectively nonstop work, Newton published Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy , most often known as Principia.
Principia is said to be the single most influential book on physics and possibly all of science. Its publication immediately raised Newton to international prominence. Principia offers an exact quantitative description of bodies in motion, with three basic but important laws of motion:. Force is equal to mass times acceleration, and a change in motion i. In Newton's account, gravity kept the universe balanced, made it work, and brought heaven and Earth together in one great equation.
Among the dissenters was Robert Hooke , one of the original members of the Royal Academy and a scientist who was accomplished in a number of areas, including mechanics and optics. While Newton theorized that light was composed of particles, Hooke believed it was composed of waves.
Hooke quickly condemned Newton's paper in condescending terms, and attacked Newton's methodology and conclusions. Hooke was not the only one to question Newton's work in optics. But because of Hooke's association with the Royal Society and his own work in optics, his criticism stung Newton the worst. Unable to handle the critique, he went into a rage—a reaction to criticism that was to continue throughout his life.
Newton denied Hooke's charge that his theories had any shortcomings and argued the importance of his discoveries to all of science. In the ensuing months, the exchange between the two men grew more acrimonious, and soon Newton threatened to quit the Royal Society altogether. He remained only when several other members assured him that the Fellows held him in high esteem.
The rivalry between Newton and Hooke would continue for several years thereafter. Then, in , Newton suffered a complete nervous breakdown and the correspondence abruptly ended. The death of his mother the following year caused him to become even more isolated, and for six years he withdrew from intellectual exchange except when others initiated correspondence, which he always kept short.
During his hiatus from public life, Newton returned to his study of gravitation and its effects on the orbits of planets. Ironically, the impetus that put Newton on the right direction in this study came from Robert Hooke.
In a letter of general correspondence to Royal Society members for contributions, Hooke wrote to Newton and brought up the question of planetary motion, suggesting that a formula involving the inverse squares might explain the attraction between planets and the shape of their orbits.
Armed with calculus, he could describe exactly how those sections behaved. These types of questions and the fact that Cambridge University, where Newton studied, was closed due to numerous outbreaks of the plague, drove Newton to expand on mathematics and develop the concepts of differential and integral calculus.
The answer to the question of how to actually invent a new form of mathematics is deceptively simple: Newton forced relationships between physical phenomena and the mathematics of the day.
Through trial and error and quite a bit of ingenuity , Newton saw the need for a whole new math, and this came from his conceptual understanding of physics. More simply, Newton already knew the concepts of calculus because he was describing gravity and planets.
It was a matter of writing it down and showing proof that it works. Today, a student who has a concept of algebra already knows more than Newton did when he invented calculus.
Math students of the present day should not fear calculus. Care about supporting clean energy adoption? Find out how much money and planet! By signing up through this link , Futurism. Newton's first work as Lucasian Professor was on optics and this was the topic of his first lecture course begun in January He had reached the conclusion during the two plague years that white light is not a simple entity.
Every scientist since Aristotle had believed that white light was a basic single entity, but the chromatic aberration in a telescope lens convinced Newton otherwise. When he passed a thin beam of sunlight through a glass prism Newton noted the spectrum of colours that was formed. He argued that white light is really a mixture of many different types of rays which are refracted at slightly different angles, and that each different type of ray produces a different spectral colour.
Newton was led by this reasoning to the erroneous conclusion that telescopes using refracting lenses would always suffer chromatic aberration. He therefore proposed and constructed a reflecting telescope. In Newton was elected a fellow of the Royal Society after donating a reflecting telescope. Also in Newton published his first scientific paper on light and colour in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.
The paper was generally well received but Hooke and Huygens objected to Newton's attempt to prove, by experiment alone, that light consists of the motion of small particles rather than waves. The reception that his publication received did nothing to improve Newton's attitude to making his results known to the world. He was always pulled in two directions, there was something in his nature which wanted fame and recognition yet another side of him feared criticism and the easiest way to avoid being criticised was to publish nothing.
Certainly one could say that his reaction to criticism was irrational, and certainly his aim to humiliate Hooke in public because of his opinions was abnormal. However, perhaps because of Newton's already high reputation, his corpuscular theory reigned until the wave theory was revived in the 19 th century. Newton's relations with Hooke deteriorated further when, in , Hooke claimed that Newton had stolen some of his optical results. Although the two men made their peace with an exchange of polite letters, Newton turned in on himself and away from the Royal Society which he associated with Hooke as one of its leaders.
He delayed the publication of a full account of his optical researches until after the death of Hooke in Newton's Opticks appeared in It dealt with the theory of light and colour and with investigations of the colours of thin sheets 'Newton's rings' and diffraction of light. To explain some of his observations he had to use a wave theory of light in conjunction with his corpuscular theory.
His mother died in the following year and he withdrew further into his shell, mixing as little as possible with people for a number of years. Newton's greatest achievement was his work in physics and celestial mechanics, which culminated in the theory of universal gravitation. By Newton had early versions of his three laws of motion. He had also discovered the law giving the centrifugal force on a body moving uniformly in a circular path.
However he did not have a correct understanding of the mechanics of circular motion. Newton's novel idea of was to imagine that the Earth's gravity influenced the Moon, counter- balancing its centrifugal force. From his law of centrifugal force and Kepler 's third law of planetary motion, Newton deduced the inverse-square law. In Newton corresponded with Hooke who had written to Newton claiming M Nauenberg writes an account of the next events:- After his correspondence with Hooke , Newton, by his own account, found a proof that Kepler's areal law was a consequence of centripetal forces, and he also showed that if the orbital curve is an ellipse under the action of central forces then the radial dependence of the force is inverse square with the distance from the centre.
This discovery showed the physical significance of Kepler 's second law. In Halley , tired of Hooke 's boasting [ M Nauenberg ] However in 'De Motu.. The proof that inverse square forces imply conic section orbits is sketched in Cor. Halley persuaded Newton to write a full treatment of his new physics and its application to astronomy. The Principia is recognised as the greatest scientific book ever written. Newton analysed the motion of bodies in resisting and non-resisting media under the action of centripetal forces.
The results were applied to orbiting bodies, projectiles, pendulums, and free-fall near the Earth. He further demonstrated that the planets were attracted toward the Sun by a force varying as the inverse square of the distance and generalised that all heavenly bodies mutually attract one another. Further generalisation led Newton to the law of universal gravitation Newton explained a wide range of previously unrelated phenomena: the eccentric orbits of comets, the tides and their variations, the precession of the Earth's axis, and motion of the Moon as perturbed by the gravity of the Sun.
This work made Newton an international leader in scientific research. The Continental scientists certainly did not accept the idea of action at a distance and continued to believe in Descartes ' vortex theory where forces work through contact.
However this did not stop the universal admiration for Newton's technical expertise. He had become a convert to the Roman Catholic church in but when he came to the throne he had strong support from Anglicans as well as Catholics. However rebellions arose, which James put down but he began to distrust Protestants and began to appoint Roman Catholic officers to the army.
He then went further, appointing only Catholics as judges and officers of state. Whenever a position at Oxford or Cambridge became vacant, the king appointed a Roman Catholic to fill it. Newton was a staunch Protestant and strongly opposed to what he saw as an attack on the University of Cambridge. When the King tried to insist that a Benedictine monk be given a degree without taking any examinations or swearing the required oaths, Newton wrote to the Vice-Chancellor:- Be courageous and steady to the Laws and you cannot fail.
The Vice-Chancellor took Newton's advice and was dismissed from his post. However Newton continued to argue the case strongly preparing documents to be used by the University in its defence.
However William of Orange had been invited by many leaders to bring an army to England to defeat James. William landed in November and James, finding that Protestants had left his army, fled to France. The University of Cambridge elected Newton, now famous for his strong defence of the university, as one of their two members to the Convention Parliament on 15 January This Parliament declared that James had abdicated and in February offered the crown to William and Mary.
Newton was at the height of his standing - seen as a leader of the university and one of the most eminent mathematicians in the world. However, his election to Parliament may have been the event which let him see that there was a life in London which might appeal to him more than the academic world in Cambridge.
After suffering a second nervous breakdown in , Newton retired from research. The reasons for this breakdown have been discussed by his biographers and many theories have been proposed: chemical poisoning as a result of his alchemy experiments; frustration with his researches; the ending of a personal friendship with Fatio de Duillier, a Swiss-born mathematician resident in London; and problems resulting from his religious beliefs.
Newton himself blamed lack of sleep but this was almost certainly a symptom of the illness rather than the cause of it. There seems little reason to suppose that the illness was anything other than depression, a mental illness he must have suffered from throughout most of his life, perhaps made worse by some of the events we have just listed.
Newton decided to leave Cambridge to take up a government position in London becoming Warden of the Royal Mint in and Master in However, he did not resign his positions at Cambridge until As Master of the Mint, adding the income from his estates, we see that Newton became a very rich man.
For many people a position such as Master of the Mint would have been treated as simply a reward for their scientific achievements. Newton did not treat it as such and he made a strong contribution to the work of the Mint. He led it through the difficult period of recoinage and he was particularly active in measures to prevent counterfeiting of the coinage.
In he was elected president of the Royal Society and was re-elected each year until his death. He was knighted in by Queen Anne, the first scientist to be so honoured for his work. However the last portion of his life was not an easy one, dominated in many ways with the controversy with Leibniz over which of them had invented the calculus.
Given the rage that Newton had shown throughout his life when criticised, it is not surprising that he flew into an irrational temper directed against Leibniz.
We have given details of this controversy in Leibniz 's biography and refer the reader to that article for details. Perhaps all that is worth relating here is how Newton used his position as President of the Royal Society. In this capacity he appointed an "impartial" committee to decide whether he or Leibniz was the inventor of the calculus.
He wrote the official report of the committee although of course it did not appear under his name which was published by the Royal Society , and he then wrote a review again anonymously which appeared in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. Newton's assistant Whiston had seen his rage at first hand. He wrote:- Newton was of the most fearful, cautious and suspicious temper that I ever knew. References show. Biography in Encyclopaedia Britannica. Z Bechler, Newton's physics and the conceptual structure of the scientific revolution Dordrecht, G Castelnuovo, Le origini del calcolo infinitesimale nell'era moderna, con scritti di Newton, Leibniz, Torricelli Milan, J Fauvel ed.
New York, Newton and the Enlightenment, Vistas Astronom. Biography Series Moscow, Including Leibniz's unpublished manuscripts on the 'Principia' New York, A , - S Aoki, The moon-test in Newton's 'Principia' : accuracy of inverse-square law of universal gravitation, Arch. Exact Sci. London 41 2 , - M Bartolozzi and R Franci, A fragment of the history of algebra : Newton's rule on the number of imaginary roots in an algebraic equation Italian , Rend.
XL Mem. Z Bechler, Newton's ontology of the force of inertia, in The investigation of difficult things Cambridge, , - Z Bechler, 'A less agreeable matter' : the disagreeable case of Newton and achromatic refraction, British J.
Z Bechler, Newton's search for a mechanistic model of colour dispersion : a suggested interpretation, Arch. History Exact Sci. E T Bell, Newton after three centuries, Amer. Monthly 49 , - Buenos Aires 12 , 9 - Histoire Sci. Monthly 56 , 73 -
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