Isaac Newton

Who is Isaac Newton?

Sir Isaac Newton was an English mathematician, physicist, astronomer, and author who is widely recognised as one of the most influential scientists of all time. Born in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, he studied at Trinity College, Cambridge. In his masterwork Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687), he formulated the laws of motion and universal gravitation, laying the foundations for classical mechanics. He made seminal contributions to optics, demonstrating that white light is composed of a spectrum of colours, and he shares credit with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz for developing calculus. Newton served as Warden and then Master of the Royal Mint and was President of the Royal Society. He was knighted by Queen Anne in 1705. His work dominated the scientific view of the physical universe for the next three centuries and remains foundational to physics and mathematics.

Sources: Isaac Newton, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, 1687 · Richard S. Westfall, Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton, 1980