Isaac Newton

Isaac Newton, a scientist, a mathematician, founder of classical physics, the man who helped lay the groundwork for astronomy and made ground-breaking discoveries in physics. No matter how great you are criticism always followed as was the case with sir Isaac Newton . Newton's greatest contribution to science is his theory of universal gravitation. without him, we wouldn't understand what makes objects move through each other or why planets orbit around stars. Born a premature in 1642 in Lincolnshire, England. Isaac was so small that his mother thought that he would die soon after birth but he proved them all wrong which soon became a trend of his life . In school, he excelled at math but hated Latin and Greek, which were required for college. He received very little in the way of formal education. He attended Cambridge, where he studied medicine, at first for a few years but then for about 15 years in total. While studying and working at Cambridge, Newton was influenced by Robert Hooke, who was one of the leaders of English science at that time. He also worked on optics and gravitation and received his Master's degree in 1667 from Trinity College. In 1669, Isaac returned to Lincolnshire to work on his family's farm while continuing his studies at Cambridge. Newton was by no means a saint, he had his share of anger, jealousy and spitefulness. Newton was a devout Puritan, who did not like the idea of government, but he believed that his country was free and needed to be dependent on their king. Newton was an outspoken individual who did not like change and often held very strong political views. It is thought that this led to him being put under close scrutiny by the government years later when he published his theory of gravitation. In 1666, Isaac Newton moved back to Cambridge and began working as an assistant to Hooke once again in 1669.Isaac continued to work on many areas of mathematics and tried out his new ideas in light. Isaac discovered several laws of optics during this time. Even in 1669 newton worked in a lab that was much like a modern-day lab. He would set up experiments to try and prove or disprove a theory, just as an experiment is set up today. Newton's research into optics led to his theory of colour, which showed how all the colours we see are made up of white light and different wavelengths of it by using a prism and showing that the colour spectrum is made up of seven different colours; Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet (or ROYGBIV). This was a major discovery because it showed that the spectrum was not the result of some influence on the eye and that there were five different colours that our eyes could see. He also came up with an equation for how light travels and breaks down into many different wavelengths. His work with optics laid the foundation of our understanding of light and vision today. By 1672, Isaac Newton was running his lab again, but now his work had expanded in terms of what he was doing. He became interested in physics as a whole; especially gravity. Isaac first began researching gravity when he read about Kepler's laws of planetary motion and how things moved from place to place like planets in space. Isaac did extensive research into the laws of gravity and came up with his version, the law of universal gravitation. The law states that every object, whether it be a planet, an atom or a human, behaves the same way when it is subject to gravity because this is how gravity behaves all over the universe. Newton's equation for the law of universal gravitation is F = Gm1m2/r2. This means that force equals mass times acceleration. Newton was known to have been both methodical and meticulous in all he did. He carried out experiments carefully and recorded every single detail in his notebooks. He also liked to collect data and do calculations. A lot of people would not have liked Newton as a person though. He was a very hard person to get along with, he did not care about other people's feelings, he had no sense of humour unless it was aimed at him, and he didn't take criticism well at all. Most of this came from the fact that Isaac had a pretty strong belief in what was right and what was wrong. This can be seen when looking at his political views which we talked about earlier in the essay. In 1687, Isaac Newton published his masterpiece; the theory of universal gravitation. Newton's theory was the first one to explain a large amount of gravity we felt, which were two masses and how they were tied together by an invisible force. Isaac also took part in a government experiment called Kit stone. It was a device that would be set up to measure gravity exactly to find out what causes gravity. The device worked using similar methods that Newton's theory did. It is thought that Isaac Newton died of stomach cancer on March 31, 1727, at age 84. While he was sick, most people wrote letters of condolence to his family and friends, but the whole country mourned at least briefly because of his death. On April 5th To show respect to Isaac Newton, the country of England stopped work at 5 pm and everyone was allowed leave. No flags were flying at half-mast; even in the church, the cross was not lowered and only 3 guns were fired. Isaac Newton's funeral lasted for just one hour, then he was buried in Westminster Abbey.