SIR ISAAC NEWTON

1. BY:SHAWN CORTEZ SIR ISAAC NEWTON Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727)

2. SIR ISAAC NEWTON Sir Isaac Newton was the greatest scientist that ever lived. More than any other person, Newton was single-handedly responsible for laying the groundwork in classical mechanics, optics, and even mathematics. Landing man on the moon? Don’t look at Einstein – it was all done with Newtonian physics. Even though every high school student that has ever taken physics (should) remember Newton’s contributions, not many know about the man behind the science. For example, did you know that Sir Isaac was an alchemist? Or that, like Einstein, he didn’t have a very promising start? Or that he was obsessed with the Bible and tried to predict Armageddon? Read on for more obscure facts about the life of Isaac Newton, the world’s greatest scientist:

3. SIR ISAAC NEWTON

4. Baby Newton Wasn’t Expected to Live In 1642, the year that Galileo Galilei died, Isaac Newton was born prematurely on Christmas Day*. Named after his father, who died just three months before he was born, Isaac was a very small baby not expected to survive. His mother even said that Isaac was so small that he could have fit inside a quart mug.

5. Newton Almost Became a Farmer Newton was born into a farming family. When he was 17, his mother insisted that he returned from school to run the family farm! Thankfully, Newton was a bad farmer and not long afterwards, his uncle successfully persuaded his mother to let him attend Trinity College in Cambridge instead.

6. Newton and His Apple: The True Story The story (popularized by Voltaire, no less!) said that Newton was inspired when he saw a falling apple while walking around his family’s garden at Woolsthorpe Manor, to formulate his theory of universal gravitation (some version even claimed the apple fell on his head!). Newton himself actually said that he was staring out the window in his house when he saw an apple fall from a tree.

7. Newton was an Alchemist

8. MATHEMATICS In mathematics too, early brilliance appeared in Newton's student notes. He may have learnt geometry at school, though he always spoke of himself as self-taught; certainly he advanced through studying the writings of his compatriots William Oughtred and John Wallis, and of Descartes and the Dutch school. Newton made contributions to all branches of mathematics then studied, but is especially famous for his solutions to the contemporary problems in analytical geometry of drawing tangents to curves (differentiation) and defining areas bounded by curves (integration). Not only did Newton discover that these problems were inverse to each other, but he discovered general methods of resolving problems of curvature, embraced in his "method of fluxions" and "inverse method of fluxions", respectively equivalent to Leibniz's later differential and integral calculus. Newton used the term "fluxion" (from Latin meaning "flow") because he imagined a quantity "flowing" from one magnitude to another. Fluxions were expressed algebraically, as Leibniz's differentials were, but Newton made extensive use also (especially in the Principia) of analogous geometrical arguments. Late in life, Newton expressed regret for the algebraic style of recent mathematical progress, preferring the geometrical method of the Classical Greeks, which he regarded as clearer and more rigorous.