Sir Isaac Newton

Newton is dipicted here with his greatest achievements. Which include advances in mathematics, optics, physics, and astronomy.

Sir Isaac Newton's Birthplace

Sir Isaac Newton is perhaps the greatest scientific genius of all time he was one of the most important figures in the scientific revolution of the 17th century. He was born on Dec. 25, 1642, in the manor house of Woolsthorpe, near Grantham, Lincolnshire, England. Newton made contributions to every major area of scientific and mathematical concern to his generation. Newton came from a family of modest yeoman farmers. His father died before he was born. His mother remarried and moved to a nearby village. Isaac was raised by his maternal grandmother. When his stepfather died in 1656, Newton's mother took him out of his grammar school in Grantham in hopes that he could run her large estate. However Newton was more interested in books and math.

Trinity College, Cambridge

It was then decided that he would got to the university, so he went to Trinity College, Cambridge, in June 1661.
Cambridge was run using the philosophy of Aristotle. During their third year some freedom of study was permitted. Newton started studying the new mechanical philosophy of Descartes, Gassendi, and Boyle; the new algebra and analytical geometry of Vieta, Descartes, and Wallis; and in the mechanics and Copernican astronomy of Galileo. When the plague forced the University to close in the summer of 1665 he returned home to Lincolnshire. Newton made pretty much all of his discoveries when the plague was making it's way through England. During the next 18 months he made revolutionary advances in mathematics, optics, physics, and astronomy.

Newton’s first discoveries dealt with optics, most of which were made during the plague years. He reached the conclusion that white light is not a simple, uniform thing. This is what the philosophers since Aristotle had believed. The old theory said that all rays of white light striking the prism at the same angle would be refracted equally. Newton found that white light is really a mixture of many different types of rays. These rays are refracted at slightly different angles. Each different type of ray is responsible for producing a given spectral color. Another experiment confirmed his theory. Newton selected the narrow band of light form one color of the spectrum. When it was sent through a second prism and observed the ray was the same length. This proved that all the rays of one color are refracted at the same angle.

Newton passing a thin beam of sunlight through a glass prism, by doing this he created a spectrum of colors. Including, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet. He found white light is really a mixture of many different types of rays that are refracted at slightly different angles. Each different type of ray is responsible for producing a given spectral color. This thought goes against the idea that white light is a uniform thing.

A closer look at a prism and its refraction of light. Newton concluded through experimentation that sunlight is a combination of all the colors of the spectrum and that the sunlight separates when passed through the prism because its component colors are of differing refrangibility.

Newton's Telescope

Because of these ideas Newton came to the conclusion that telescopes using refracting lenses could never overcome the distortions of chromatic spreading. He constructed a reflecting telescope which became the prototype of the largest modern optical telescopes.

Newton's Color Circle

Based on his work with prisms Sir Isaac Newton first put together a circular diagram of colors in 1666. The color wheel allows you to see groupings of colors that look nice together and other colors that might clash.

Color Circle Today

This is an example of what the color wheel we use today looks like. It is very different then the one Newton made all those years ago, but the basic shape and ideas are still there.

Newton published his first scientific paper. It dealt with the new theory of light and color and is one of the earliest examples of the short research paper. Two of the leading natural philosophers, Robert Hooke and Christian Huygens, rejected Newton's theory. In particular they objected to Newton's attempt to prove that light exists in the motion of small particles, also known as corpuscles. Not in the transmission of waves or pulses, as they both believed. Newton did not do a good job at proving them wrong; however, his ideas about scientific method won universal consent, as did his corpuscular theory. These ideas where accepted until the early 19th century when the wave theory was looked at again.
Newton and Hooke no longer spoke to each other after the debate over his ideas. Newton devoted himself to chemical and alchemical research instead of his ideas about color. He did not publish his book about the account of his optical researches until after the death of Hooke in 1703. Opticks was published the next year.

Opticks

Sir Isaac Newton's book, called Opticks. Opticks talked about his theory of light and color and Newton's investigations of colors of thin sheets, of "Newton's rings," and of the phenomenon of diffraction of light. To explain some of his observations he had to attach elements of a wave theory of light onto his basic corpuscular theory.

Newton' Rings

Newton's Rings are a pattern formed when a circular object and a flat surface come together. When viewed with a monochromatic light you see the image above. But, when it is viewed in white light the rings take on the color of the rainbow. This helped Newton prove that colors have different wavelengths.

Principia

Newton also published another book called Principia. This made Newton to become recognized as the leading natural philosopher of the age. However his creative career was over. After having a nervous breakdown in 1693, he stopped researching and took up government positions in London. In 1696 he became Warden of the Royal Mint and in 1699 he became the Master. This was a very worthwhile position. In 1703 he was elected president of the Royal Society and was reelected each year until his death. He was knighted in 1708 by Queen Anne. He was the first scientist to be knighted for his work. Some idea he talked about in this book were his ideas about math, gravity and motion and the stars.

Calculus

Newton also laid down the framework for calculus several years before Leibniz is said to have discovered it. He called it the 'method of fluxions', and it was based on his insight that the integration of a function is merely the inverse procedure to differentiating it.nnNewton produced simple analytical methods that brought together many separate techniques previously developed to solve unrelated problems. These included things such as finding areas, tangents, the lengths of curves, and their maximum and minimun.

Newton's Apple

It is said that an apple falling out of a tree and hitting Newton on the head was how he came up with his ideas about gravity. His law states: all matter attracts all other matter with a force proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.

Solar System

Newton found that the planets were attracted toward the Sun by a force varying depending on the distance between them. He also explained the previously unrelated phenomenas of the unpredictable orbits of comets; the tides and their changes; the precession of the Earth's axis; and motion of the Moon as effected by the gravity of the Sun.


Halley used Newton's theory to predict the path of Halley's comet. He was able to predict withen a month when the comet would come back again.