In 1669 Isaac Barrow, the Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge, resigned and nominated Newton for the post. Never one to share credit, Newton accused Leibniz of plagiarism and persecuted him for 25 years. Independently, German philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz had discovered the calculus, and most scientists found Leibniz’s notation superior to Newton’s (although German mathematicians prefer Newton’s notation). That same year he published the treatise De methodis serieum et fluxionum (On the Methods of Series and Fluxions) that alluded to his discovery of calculus but did not specifically explain it. When the university reopened in 1667, Newton became a Fellow. He also studied the refraction of white light into colors through a prism and worked on his theories of planetary orbits and how to calculate them. Besides inventing differential calculus-a form of mathematical analysis that uses infinitesimal changes to find the slopes of curves and the area under those curves-Newton spent time alone in his laboratory, cooking up alchemical processes and reading occult lore. He was forced to leave Cambridge and work at home, however, as the university had closed to avoid the Great Plague of 1665–66. Newton received his degree from Cambridge in 1665, the same year he discovered the binomial theorem of mathematics, the precursor to calculus. But Newton also read the work of Henry More, a Cambridge Platonist and alchemist. Newton began to study the new philosophers avidly on his own. Already fascinated by the work of Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, and Copernicus, Newton chafed under the traditional study of Aristotelian notions of the “natural” world as taught by not only Cambridge but also by every other major university in Europe. Newton hated his mother and stepfather, and later biographers attribute his psychotic behaviors to his early abandonment.Ī child prodigy, Newton attended Grantham Grammar School and in 1661 entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where his uncle William Ayscough had gone. Newton was raised by his grandmother until Smith died in 1653 when his mother returned and tried to resume relations, failing miserably. Within two years the young widow married a well-to-do minister named Barnabas Smith and moved away to raise a new family. He was born on January 4, 1643, in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, to Hannah Ayscough Newton his father, Isaac Senior, died three months before his birth. The infant Isaac was not expected even to live much less become famous. Like many other geniuses, Newton’s brilliant analytical mind was often overshadowed by his anger, insecurity, pride, obsessiveness, and vengeful nature. Newton’s reconciliation of empirical science and pseudo-science could be his greatest achievement. Ironically, it was Newton’s acceptance of the Hermetic principles of sympathy and antipathy-attraction and repulsion-in ether that enabled him to discover the quantitative principles of what is known as Newton’s Third Law: that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. He pored over ancient manuscripts and tracts, looking for the secret codes that would explain how metals could be made to multiply. Newton was also an avid alchemist, spending years on occult studies and searching for the Philosopher's Stone. His contributions to the fields of mechanics, physics, optics, thermodynamics, and mathematics, but most especially his discovery of the laws of gravitation, have earned him a place as one of the most influential people of all time. Sir Isaac Newton (1643–1727) English scientist, physicist, and mathematician who is credited generally with establishing modern science, paving the way for the breakthroughs of the 18th century and the eventual rise of the Industrial Revolution.
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