Sir Isaac Newton (1642 - 1727)
English Physicist &
Mathematician
• Made many major contributions to math,
physics, & many other areas. A GENIUS!!
• Has been called the
“Greatest Scientist Who Ever Lived!”
Sir Isaac Newton
German Postage
Stamp
Death Mask!
Gravestone
English Money
Gravestone Inscription
“Mortals! Rejoice at so
great an ornament to
the human race!”
Sir Isaac Newton
“Nature and Nature's
laws lay hid in night
God said ‘Let
Newton be!’
And all was light.”
The poet Alexander Pope
Some Newton Cartoons
(There are thousands!)
Some Force & Gravity Cartoons
A “Simple” Anti-Gravity Device!!
 A cat + a piece of buttered toast!!
A “Simple” Anti-Gravity Device!!
 A cat + a piece of buttered toast!!
A “Simple” Anti-Gravity Device!!
 A cat + a piece of buttered toast!!
Some interesting
historical facts about
Isaac Newton
From the Appendix to
the book:
A Brief History
of Time
By
Stephen Hawking
Some interesting
historical facts about
Isaac Newton
From the Appendix to
the book:
A Brief History
of Time
By
Stephen Hawking
Newton’s Formative (Younger) Years
• Born: December 25, 1642
(January 4, 1643) Woolsthorpe,
Lincolnshire, England.
• Raised by his grandparents.
• Pulled out of school at 14 to run
the family farm.
• He wasn’t good at farming, so
they sent him back to school!!
Newton Residence
~ 1689
Newton’s Education
• Entered Trinity College at
Cambridge University at
age 18 and began studying
to become a minister!
• Graduated at age 23
• Returned to the farm because
of the Black Death (Plague)
– He got bored and ended
up working on the
binomial theorem, light,
telescopes, calculus, and
theology.
Newton
~ 1702
Colleagues and Rivals
• He was friends with Edmond Halley, the
astronomer famous for Halley’s comet.
• Robert Hooke, and G.W Leibniz were
colleagues whom he had heated arguments
with so they may be considered rivals.
“Mr. Hook said he had had it, but that
he would conceal it for some time so
that others, trying and failing might
know how to value it, when he should
make it public.”
Newton & Calculus
• Newton started developing
Calculus as early as 1666 but
never got around to publishing
much of it.
• In 1668, Gottfried Leibniz began
developing similar ideas &
published them before Newton
published his work.
• Arguing over who was first became bitter & personal!!
• For derivatives, Leibniz used the (dy/dx)
notation; Newton used ẏ.
Scientific Accomplishments
• Among his MANY
ACCOMPLISHMENTS are:
1. Newton’s Laws of Motion
2. Theory of Gravitational
Force
3. Theory of the Orbital Period
of the Moon
4. Co-Inventor of Calculus
5. Newton’s Theory of Color
Newton & Opticks
(“Opticks” is how “optics” is spelled in Old English!)
• Newton discovered that light is
made up of a spectrum of colors.
• He made the first telescope that used
a curved mirror instead of lenses.
• He believed that light was
made up of particles
(“corpuscles”) rather than waves
(Hooke & Huygens disagreed).
• He didn’t publish this until
after Hooke’s death in 1703. Newton in his lab
The Telescope
• His first real step into
the inventor’s world is
when he invented the
telescope.
– He even made the tools
he needed for this job
A Newtonian Telescope
Laws of Motion & Gravity
Newton
• Formulated Newton’s Laws of Motion.
• Proved that the force of gravity between
two masses is inversely proportional to the
square of the distance between them.
• Used the Laws of Motion + the
Gravitation Law + Calculus to prove that
the planetary orbits about the sun are
ellipses, in agreement with observation!
• He & many others considered his solution to the planetary
orbit problem to be his “Greatest Achievement”. After
solving this + making many contributions to optics, he
decided to work on changing lead into gold (alchemy!) &
also to do biblical research.
Theory of Color
• Newton was the first to
understand the rainbow
• Newton refracted white
light with a prism, resolving
it into its component colors:
red, orange, yellow, green,
blue and violet.
Theory of Color
• At the time, people thought
that color was a mixture of
light and darkness, and that
prisms colored light. Newton
proved this to be wrong
• Newton set up a prism near his
window, and projected a
beautiful spectrum 22 feet
onto the far wall.
• Further, to prove that the
prism was not coloring the
light, he refracted the light
back together.
Newton’s Particle Theory of Light
1. Light is made up of tiny particles
-Because of this, when two beams of light
intersect they do not scatter off each other
2. Particles of light obey the same laws of physics
as other masses
• A horizontal beam of light near the earth is
undergoing projectile motion, and forms a
parabola.
• The straight line we see is due to the fact that the
speed of the particles is so great.
Newton & Alchemy
• Newton was not really known as an
alchemist but it was actually one of his
secret passions
– Alchemy is in short trying to make metals such
al lead into gold
• His servants would say that he would spend
weeks in his laboratory working on alchemy
experiments
Newton’s Religious Views
Newton
• Was a devout, fundamentalist
Protestant.
• Was strongly Anti-Catholic.
• Wrote a book about the fall of
Christianity in the 4th Century A.D.
• Had religious ideas that sometimes got him into trouble
because he taught at a church-run university.
A Quote
“This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could
only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent Being ...
This Being governs all things ... as Lord of all. . . Atheism is so
senseless. When I look at the solar system, I see the earth at the right
distance from the sun to receive the proper amounts of heat and light.
This did not happen by chance.”
Newtonian Trivia
Newton
• Became Master of the Royal
Mint in 1699.
• Was the first scientist to be
knighted for his work (1708).
• Was elected President of the
Royal Society every year from
1703 to 1727.
Newton in 1726
• Was a member of Parliament
(1689-1690).
• Died in 1727.
Some Famous Newton Quotes
(about his scientific achievements)
1. “I do not know what I may appear to the world,
but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy
playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in
now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier
shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth
lay all undiscovered before me.”
2. “If I have ever made any valuable discoveries, it
has been owing more to patient attention, than to any
other talent.”
3. “Whatever I have accomplished, it was possible
because I stood on the shoulders of Giants”
Death
• He died in 1727
– When he was eighty he began
to suffer from incontinence,
due to a weakness in the
bladder, and his movement and
diet became restricted.
– He then got bladder stones
– In 1725 he fell ill with gout,
and endured hemorrhoids
Death
Meanwhile, the pain
from his bladder stones
grew worse, and on
March 19, 1727, he
blacked out, never to
regain consciousness.
He died on March 20, at
the age of eighty-five
End of an Era
• Newton was knighted by Queen Anne in 1705
• It is believed Newton never had a romantic
relationship, and never been married
• There is some speculation that Newton had
Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism
• In the last few years of Newton's life he was
troubled by urinary problem probably due to
a kidney stone
• He endured great suffering. On March 18th he
became ‘crazy’ around 6pm and stayed in that
state until Monday March 20th 1727 when he
died between one and two in the morning.
• His body was moved to London and on
Tuesday March 28th it lay in state in the
Jerusalem Chambers in Westminster Abbey,
then moved to his burial location in the Abbey.
• Newton's conceptions of gravity and mechanics,
though not entirely correct in light of Einstein's
Theory of Relativity, still represent an enormous step
in the evolution of human understanding of the
universe. For this reason, he is generally considered
one of history's greatest scientists, ranking alongside
such figures as Einstein and Gauss.
• The law of gravity became Sir Isaac Newton's bestknown discovery. Newton warned against using it to
view the universe as a mere machine, like a great
clock. He said, "Gravity explains the motions of the
planets, but it cannot explain who set the planets in
motion. God governs all things and knows all that is
or can be done."