Mathematician:Isaac Newton

Mathematician
Hugely influential English all-rounder famous for: and much more. It is suspected nowadays that he may have had Asperger's syndrome.
 * Inventing calculus, independently of
 * Successfully providing a mathematical model for the force of gravity
 * Formulating the Principle of Conservation of Momentum and Principle of Conservation of Angular Momentum
 * Building the first practical optical reflecting telescope
 * Developing a theory of colour based on the splitting of light with a prism

Because of a supposed feud between him and, over priority over the Calculus, fuelled unwisely by his colleagues and supposed friends, the cutting edge of analysis passed to the Continent, and England was left in a mathematical backwater.

Spent much of his childhood constructing functional mechanical toys which he shared with his friends in the village.

Nationality
English

History

 * Born: 25 December 1642, Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England
 * 1665: Returned home from Cambridge on closure of universities on account of plague
 * 1667: Returned to Cambridge
 * 1669: Accepted the position of Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, passed to him by, who stepped down in his favour
 * 1696: Became Master of the Mint
 * Died: 20 March 1727, London, England

Mathematics

 * Newton's Method for approximating the zeroes of a function
 * General Binomial Theorem
 * Fundamental Theorem of Calculus

Physics

 * Newton (unit of force)
 * Newton's Laws of Motion
 * Newton's Law of Cooling
 * Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation
 * Principle of Conservation of Momentum
 * Principle of Conservation of Angular Momentum
 * Body behaves as Particle under Gravitation

Books and Papers

 * c. 1664: Quaestiones Quaedam Philosophicae (Certain Philosophical Questions)
 * 1669: On Analysis by Means of Equations with an Infinite Number of Terms
 * 1671: Method of Fluxions and Infinite Series
 * 1684: De Motu Corporum in Gyrum
 * 1687: (usually referred to as the Principia)
 * 1704:
 * 1707: Arithmetica Universalis

Notable Quotes

 * If I have seen a little farther than others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.


 * I do not frame hypotheses.


 * Absolute space, in its own nature, without regard to anything external, remains always similar and immovable ... Absolute, true, and mathematical time, of itself, and of its own nature, flows equably and without regard to anything external.

Critical View

 * I recognise the lion by his print.
 * --, on seeing Newton's solution to his brachistochrone problem


 * The method of Fluxions [i.e. the calculus] is the general key by help whereof the modern mathematicians unlock the secrets of Geometry, and consequently of Nature.


 * Nobody since Newton has been able to use geometrical methods to the same extent for the like purposes; and as we read the we feel as when we are in an ancient armoury where the weapons are of gigantic size; and as we look at them we marvel at what manner of man he was who could use as a weapon what we can scarcely lift as a burden.


 * Nature to him was an open book, whose letters he could read without effort.


 * Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night:
 * God said, "Let Newton be!" and all was light.
 * -- Alexander Pope