Isaac Newton

1. Isaac Newton By ZelalemDejen

2. Early years • Newton was born in Woolsthorpe, a very small village in the county of Lincolnshire. Newton was prematurely born and no one expected him to live. His Father, Isaac, had died three months before Newton's birth. • From the age of about twelve until he was seventeen, Newton was educated at the king’s school in Grantham. • In June 1661 he matriculated to trinity college, Cambridge. • During college years, Newton preferred to read the more advanced ideas of modern philosophers such as Descartes and astronomers such as Galileo ,Copernicus and kepler. • In 1665 he discovered the binomial theorem and began to develop a mathematical theory that would latter become calculus. • In 1665, the same year Newton had obtained his degree, the university closed down as a precaution against the great plague. For the next 18 months Newton worked at home on calculus, optics and law of gravitation.

3. Middle years About Mathematical research . Newton is generally credited with the binomial theorem, an essential step toward the development of modern analysis. Newton and Gottfried Leibniz developed the calculus independently, using different notations. Although Newton had worked out his method years before Leibniz, he published almost nothing about it until 1693,and did not give a full account until 1704. . Newton claimed that he had been reluctant to publish his calculus because he feared being mocked for it. About optics . From1670 to 1672 he lectured on optics. During this period he investigated the refraction of light, demonstrating that a prism could decompose white light into a spectrum of colors, and that a lens and a second prism could recompose the multicolored spectrum into white light. . Newton argued that light is composed of particles, but he has to associate them with waves to explain the diffraction of light.

5. About Gravity and motion • In 1670’s, Newton worked on mechanics, i.e., gravitation and its effect on the orbits of planets. • He published his results in De Motu Corporum(1684). This contained the beginnings of the laws of motion that would inform the principia. • In this work Newton stated the three universal laws of motion that were not to be improved upon for more thantwo hundred years.

6. Later life • In the 1690s Newton wrote a number of religious tracts dealing with the literal interpretation of the bible. • His religious idea was influenced by the belief in the infinity of the universe. • He wrote a manuscript disputing the existence of the trinity, but it was never published. • Newton was a member of the parliament of England. • In 1696 he moved to take up the post of administrator of the royal mint. • Newton was made president of the royal society in 1703 and an associate of the French Academie des sciences.

7. Religious views • To Newton, his scientific and religious experiments were one and the same, observing and understanding how the world functioned. • He more likely held the eastern orthodox view of the trinity rather than the western one held by roman Catholics, Anglicans, and most protestants. • In relation to his work of law of gravity he said, “ gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it can not explain who set the planets in motion. God governs all things and knows all that is or can be done.”

8. Newton and thecounterfeiters • As an administrator of the royal mint, Newton estimated that 20% of the coins taken in during the Recoinage were counterfeit. • In order to prosecute the counterfeiters, he assembled facts and proved his theories with the same brilliance in law that he had shown in science and he won his case. • Newton’s greatest triumph as the king’s attorney was against William chaloner, a rouge with a devious intelligence. After Newton proved to court that chaloner was the counterfeiter, chaloner was hanged.

9. Bibliography • Isaac Newton and the scientific revolution, Gale E. Christianson: oxford University press; new York-oxford, 1996. • The life of Isaac Newton, Richard West fall: Cambridge university press; canto edition, 1994. • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac-Newton • www.groups.dcs.st.and.ac.uk/~history/mathematicians/newton.html