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What is Isaac Newton famous for?
- discovering gravity and how the planets move in the sky
- explaining the laws of light and colour
- inventing the cat flap
“Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night; God said "Let Newton be" and all was light”
- Alexander Pope
Newton is today considered one of the most important scientists, mathematicians and thinkers of all time. NowYouKnowAbout Scientists brings your children Newton’s life story in DVD format as part of an easy introduction to great historical figures.
Isaac Newton was born in 1643 in Woolsthorpe in Lincolnshire into a farming family. His father had died just a few months before his birth and Newton was a premature baby, causing his mother to joke that she could fit him into a quart jug when he was born. He was not expected to live but he ended up living 85 long years, an unusually long life for that time.
When he was 3 years old, Isaac’s mother remarried and he was left in the care of his granny. At 10 he was sent to Grantham to school. Unlike most of the scientists featured in this entertaining and educational DVD for children except perhaps Charles Darwin, Newton wasn’t very interested in schoolwork and preferred entertaining himself by making things and reading. While at school in Grantham, he lived with a pharmacist, Mr Clark and enjoying fiddling around in the chemist’s shop with all his lotions and creams. He was also skilled with his hands and made sundials, windmills, water clocks and a mechanical carriage.
When Newton’s mother returned to the farm in Woolsthorpe on the death of her second husband, she summoned Isaac back to take over the farm. But he had no interest in farming and couldn’t control the animals nor manage the farm.
As it was clear that he was destined to do something more academic, he was sent to Cambridge, to Trinity College. There he could study and learn from morning ‘til night and took every opportunity to work hard, while the other, mostly rich and aristocratic students just enjoyed themselves.
When the plague came to Cambridge, Newton returned to Woolsthorpe and it was there, with his trained and eager mind, that he supposedly sat in the apple orchard and discovered gravity. His mathematical formulae provided the proof and the explanation of the force of gravity in our universe and to this day, Newton’s principles are used in countless modern industrial applications. He also developed his laws of motion and differential calculus and various other mathematical principles which he published in his famous Principia Mathematica.
He also wrote a book about optics after studying the nature of light. This curiosity led on quite naturally to the building of a telescope. Telescopes had been built before but Newton was the first to make a reflecting telescope. This was important as, for the first time, it gave a much clearer and sharper definition to the image. When Newton returned to Cambridge after the plague was over, he was appointed the youngest mathematics professor to teach at Cambridge. However, as is often typical of extremely gifted minds, his lectures were very complex, difficult to follow and rather dull.
Intermittently Isaac Newton suffered from bouts of depression, possibly due to the intellectual exertion of writing his famous Principia. He was also highly secretive about his work and very concerned with people stealing his ideas. Robert Hooke was a great rival of his on the issue of gravity and other important mathematical principles. Also he fell out with the Astronomer Royal, John Flamsteed, over sharing ideas and information. And towards the end of his life, he was entangled in a lengthy and bitter controversy with the German scientists Leibniz over who had invented calculus.
In 1696 Newton’s friends in the government got him a job as Warden of the Mint. This position meant a move to London, where he lived until his death. At the mint Newton reorganized the coinage and introduced the policy of minting coins with milled edges to prevent counterfeiting which had been a widespread problem. This required great technical and administrative talent and he was promoted to Master of the Mint.
At the age of 58, Newton became president of the Royal Society and 4 years later, Queen Anne knighted Newton. By this time Newton was the dominant figure in British and European science and well-known everywhere.
In 1725 at the age of 83, Newton moved from London to Kensington (then a village outside London) for health reasons. He died there on March 20, 1727. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, the first scientist to be so honored. Besides his scientific work, Newton left substantial writings on theology, chronology, alchemy, and chemistry.
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