{{Short description|English mathematician and physicist (1642â€“1727)}}{{Other uses}}{{Good article}}{{Pp-move}}{{Pp-semi-indef}}{{EngvarB|date=January 2024}}{{Use dmy dates|date=January 2024}}

*factoids*

| image = Portrait of Sir Isaac Newton, 1689 (brightened).jpg| alt = | caption = Portrait of Newton at 46, 1689{{Birth date164304}}name=OSNS}}Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth,}} Lincolnshire, England{{Death date and age1727310120 March 1726}}{{efn|name=OSNS}}| death_place = Kensington, Middlesex, Great Britain| resting_place = Westminster Abbey Physicsnatural philosophy> alchemy mathematicsastronomy> economics}} University of CambridgeRoyal Society> Royal Mint}}Trinity College, Cambridge (Bachelor of Arts>B.A., 1665; M.A., 1668)Kevin C. Knox, Richard Noakes (eds.), From Newton to Hawking: A History of Cambridge University’s Lucasian Professors of Mathematics, Cambridge University Press, 2003, p. 61. Isaac BarrowFeingold, Mordechai. Barrow, Isaac (1630â€“1677) {{Webarchivewww.oxforddnb.com/view/article/1541 >date=29 January 2013 }}, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, September 2004; online edn, May 2007. Retrieved 24 February 2009; explained further in FEINGOLD >FIRST=MORDECHAI TITLE=NEWTON, LEIBNIZ, AND BARROW TOO: AN ATTEMPT AT A REINTERPRETATION VOLUME=84 PAGES=310â€“338 DOI=10.1086/356464 S2CID=144019197, Benjamin PulleynDICTIONARY OF SCIENTIFIC BIOGRAPHY ARCHIVE-URL=HTTPS://WEB.ARCHIVE.ORG/WEB/20050225223812/HTTP://WWW.CHLT.ORG/SANDBOX/LHL/DSB/PAGE.50.A.PHP AT=NOTES, NO. 4, {{harvnb1986date=August 2014}}}}}} Roger Cotes| William Whiston}} Fellow of the Royal Society (1672)FELLOWS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY ARCHIVE-URL=HTTPS://WEB.ARCHIVE.ORG/WEB/20150316060617/HTTPS://ROYALSOCIETY.ORG/ABOUT-US/FELLOWSHIP/FELLOWS PUBLISHER=ROYAL SOCIETY Knight Bachelor (1705)}}Classical mechanics> universal gravitationcalculus> Newton’s laws of motionoptics> binomial series PhilosophiÃ¦ Naturalis Principia Mathematica>PrincipiaNewton’s method > Newton’s law of coolingNewton’s identities> Newton’s metalNewton line> Newtonâ€“Gauss lineNewtonian fluid> Newton’s rings Standing on the shoulders of giants >List of things named after Isaac Newton>}}200px)| signature_alt = Signature written in ink in a flowing script

factoids

}}Sir Isaac Newton {{post-nominals|country=GBR|size=100%|FRS}} (25 December 1642 â€“ 20 March 1726/27{{efn|name=OSNS|During Newton’s lifetime, two calendars were in use in Europe: the Julian (“Old Style“) calendar in Protestant and Orthodox regions, including Britain; and the Gregorian (“New Style“) calendar in Roman Catholic Europe. At Newton’s birth, Gregorian dates were ten days ahead of Julian dates; thus, his birth is recorded as taking place on 25 December 1642 Old Style, but it can be converted to a New Style (modern) date of 4 January 1643. By the time of his death, the difference between the calendars had increased to eleven days. Moreover, he died in the period after the start of the New Style year on 1 January but before that of the Old Style new year on 25 March. His death occurred on 20 March 1726, according to the Old Style calendar, but the year is usually adjusted to 1727. A full conversion to New Style gives the date 31 March 1727.WEB, Thony, Christie, 2015, Calendrical confusion or just when did Newton die?,thonyc.wordpress.com/2015/03/20/calendrical-confusion-or-just-when-did-newton-die/, live,web.archive.org/web/20150402203630/https://thonyc.wordpress.com/2015/03/20/calendrical-confusion-or-just-when-did-newton-die/, 2 April 2015, 20 March 2015, The Renaissance Mathematicus, {{Self-published inline|date=January 2023}}}}) was an English polymath active as a mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author who was described in his time as a natural philosopher.WEB, Alex, Berezow, 4 February 2022, Who was the smartest person in the world?,bigthink.com/the-past/smartest-person-world-isaac-newton/, 28 September 2023, Big Think, 28 September 2023,web.archive.org/web/20230928161012/https://bigthink.com/the-past/smartest-person-world-isaac-newton/, live, He was a key figure in the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment that followed. His pioneering book (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy), first published in 1687, consolidated many previous results and established classical mechanics.JOURNAL, Whiteside, D. T., 1991, The Prehistory of the ‘Principia’ from 1664 to 1686,www.jstor.org/stable/531520, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 45, 1, 11â€“61, 10.1098/rsnr.1991.0002, 0035-9149, 531520, 145338571, 8 May 2023, 13 April 2023,web.archive.org/web/20230413084418/https://www.jstor.org/stable/531520, live, BOOK, Gandt, F. D.,books.google.com/books?id=kkoABAAAQBAJ, Force and Geometry in Newton’s Principia, Princeton University Press, 2014, 978-1-4008-6412-6, ixâ€“xii, 8 May 2023, 2 July 2023,web.archive.org/web/20230702094002/https://books.google.com/books?id=kkoABAAAQBAJ, live, Newton also made seminal contributions to optics, and shares credit with German mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz for developing infinitesimal calculus, though he developed calculus years before Leibniz.In the , Newton formulated the laws of motion and universal gravitation that formed the dominant scientific viewpoint for centuries until it was superseded by the theory of relativity. Newton used his mathematical description of gravity to derive Kepler’s laws of planetary motion, account for tides, the trajectories of comets, the precession of the equinoxes and other phenomena, eradicating doubt about the Solar System’s heliocentricity.BOOK, More, Louis Trenchard,archive.org/details/isaacnewtonbiogr0000loui/mode/1up, Isaac Newton, a Biography, Dover Publications, 1934, 327, en, He demonstrated that the motion of objects on Earth and celestial bodies could be accounted for by the same principles. Newton’s inference that the Earth is an oblate spheroid was later confirmed by the geodetic measurements of Maupertuis, La Condamine, and others, convincing most European scientists of the superiority of Newtonian mechanics over earlier systems.Newton built the first practical reflecting telescope and developed a sophisticated theory of colour based on the observation that a prism separates white light into the colours of the visible spectrum. His work on light was collected in his highly influential book Opticks, published in 1704. He also formulated an empirical law of cooling, made the first theoretical calculation of the speed of sound, and introduced the notion of a Newtonian fluid. In addition to his work on calculus, as a mathematician Newton contributed to the study of power series, generalised the binomial theorem to non-integer exponents, developed a method for approximating the roots of a function, and classified most of the cubic plane curves.Newton was a fellow of Trinity College and the second Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge. He was a devout but unorthodox Christian who privately rejected the doctrine of the Trinity. He refused to take holy orders in the Church of England, unlike most members of the Cambridge faculty of the day. Beyond his work on the mathematical sciences, Newton dedicated much of his time to the study of alchemy and biblical chronology, but most of his work in those areas remained unpublished until long after his death. Politically and personally tied to the Whig party, Newton served two brief terms as Member of Parliament for the University of Cambridge, in 1689â€“1690 and 1701â€“1702. He was knighted by Queen Anne in 1705 and spent the last three decades of his life in London, serving as Warden (1696â€“1699) and Master (1699â€“1727) of the Royal Mint, as well as president of the Royal Society (1703â€“1727).

Early life

Isaac Newton was born (according to the Julian calendar in use in England at the time) on Christmas Day, 25 December 1642 (NS 4 January 1643{{efn|name=OSNS}}) at Woolsthorpe Manor in Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth, a hamlet in the county of Lincolnshire.WEB, Hatch, Robert A., 1988, Sir Isaac Newton,users.clas.ufl.edufhatch/pages/01-courses/current-courses/08sr-newton.htm, 13 June 2023, 5 November 2022, https:web.archive.org/web/20221105011958users.clas.ufl.edu/ufhatch/pages/01-Courses/current-courses/08sr-newton.htm, live, His father, also named Isaac Newton, had died three months before. Born prematurely, Newton was a small child; his mother Hannah Ayscough reportedly said that he could have fit inside a quart mug.JOURNAL, Storr, Anthony, Anthony Storr, December 1985, Isaac Newton, British Medical Journal (Clinical Research Edition), 291, 6511, 1779â€“84, 10.1136/bmj.291.6511.1779, 29521701, 1419183, 3936583, When Newton was three, his mother remarried and went to live with her new husband, the Reverend Barnabas Smith, leaving her son in the care of his maternal grandmother, Margery Ayscough (nÃ©e Blythe). Newton disliked his stepfather and maintained some enmity towards his mother for marrying him, as revealed by this entry in a list of sins committed up to the age of 19: “Threatening my father and mother Smith to burn them and the house over them.“JOURNAL, Keynes, Milo, 20 September 2008, Balancing Newton’s Mind: His Singular Behaviour and His Madness of 1692â€“93, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 62, 3, 289â€“300, 10.1098/rsnr.2007.0025, 20462679, 19244857, free, Newton’s mother had three children (Mary, Benjamin, and Hannah) from her second marriage.{{sfn|Westfall|1980|p=55}}

The King’s School

From the age of about twelve until he was seventeen, Newton was educated at The King’s School in Grantham, which taught Latin and Ancient Greek and probably imparted a significant foundation of mathematics.“Newton the Mathematician” Z. Bechler, ed., Contemporary Newtonian Research(Dordrecht 1982) pp. 110â€“111 He was removed from school by his mother and returned to Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth by October 1659. His mother, widowed for the second time, attempted to make him a farmer, an occupation he hated.{{sfn|Westfall|1994|pp=16â€“19}} Henry Stokes, master at The King’s School, persuaded his mother to send him back to school. Motivated partly by a desire for revenge against a schoolyard bully, he became the top-ranked student,{{sfn|White|1997|p=22}} distinguishing himself mainly by building sundials and models of windmills.{{sfn|Westfall|1980|pp=60â€“62}}

University of Cambridge

In June 1661, Newton was admitted to Trinity College at the University of Cambridge. His uncle Reverend William Ayscough, who had studied at Cambridge, recommended him to the university. At Cambridge, Newton started as a subsizar, paying his way by performing valet duties until he was awarded a scholarship in 1664, which covered his university costs for four more years until the completion of his MA.{{sfn|Westfall|1980|pp=71, 103}} At the time, Cambridge’s teachings were based on those of Aristotle, whom Newton read along with then more modern philosophers, including Descartes and astronomers such as Galileo Galilei and Thomas Street. He set down in his notebook a series of “Quaestiones” about mechanical philosophy as he found it. In 1665, he discovered the generalised binomial theorem and began to develop a mathematical theory that later became calculus. Soon after Newton obtained his BA degree at Cambridge in August 1665, the university temporarily closed as a precaution against the Great Plague.EB1911, Newton, Sir Isaac, 19, 583, Henry Martyn, Taylor, Although he had been undistinguished as a Cambridge student,BOOK, Cambridge Illustrated History of Astronomy, 1997, Cambridge University Press, 978-0-521-41158-5, Hoskins, Michael, 159, Newton’s private studies at his home in Woolsthorpe over the next two years saw the development of his theories on calculus,WEB, Newton, Isaac, Waste Book,cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-ADD-04004, live,cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-ADD-04004/," title="web.archive.org/web/20120108205159cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-ADD-04004/,">web.archive.org/web/20120108205159cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-ADD-04004/, 8 January 2012, 10 January 2012, Cambridge University Digital Library, optics, and the law of gravitation.In April 1667, Newton returned to the University of Cambridge, and in October he was elected as a fellow of Trinity.{{acad|id=NWTN661I|name=Newton, Isaac}}{{sfn|Westfall|1980|p=178}} Fellows were required to take holy orders and be ordained as Anglican priests, although this was not enforced in the Restoration years, and an assertion of conformity to the Church of England was sufficient. He made the commitment that “I will either set Theology as the object of my studies and will take holy orders when the time prescribed by these statutes [7 years] arrives, or I will resign from the college.“{{sfn|Westfall|1980|p=179}} Up until this point he had not thought much about religion and had twice signed his agreement to the Thirty-nine Articles, the basis of Church of England doctrine. By 1675 the issue could not be avoided, and by then his unconventional views stood in the way.{{sfn|Westfall|1980|pp=330â€“331}}His academic work impressed the Lucasian professor Isaac Barrow, who was anxious to develop his own religious and administrative potential (he became master of Trinity College two years later); in 1669, Newton succeeded him, only one year after receiving his MA. The terms of the Lucasian professorship required that the holder {{em|not}} be active in the church â€“ presumably{{weasel inline|date=December 2018}} to leave more time for science. Newton argued that this should exempt him from the ordination requirement, and King Charles II, whose permission was needed, accepted this argument; thus, a conflict between Newton’s religious views and Anglican orthodoxy was averted.{{sfn|White|1997|p=151}}Newton was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1672.

Mid-life

Calculus

Newton’s work has been said “to distinctly advance every branch of mathematics then studied”.{{sfn|Ball|1908|p=319}} His work on the subject, usually referred to as fluxions or calculus, seen in a manuscript of October 1666, is now published among Newton’s mathematical papers.Whiteside, D.T., ed. (1967). “Part 7: The October 1666 Tract on Fluxions”. The Mathematical Papers of Isaac Newton. 1. Cambridge University Press. p. 400. {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160512135610books.google.com/books?id=1ZcYsNBptfYC&pg=PA400 |date=12 May 2016 }}. His work De analysi per aequationes numero terminorum infinitas, sent by Isaac Barrow to John Collins in June 1669, was identified by Barrow in a letter sent to Collins that August as the work “of an extraordinary genius and proficiency in these things”.{{sfn|Gjertsen|1986|p=149}} Newton later became involved in a dispute with Leibniz over priority in the development of calculus. Most modern historians believe that Newton and Leibniz developed calculus independently, although with very different mathematical notations. However, it is established that Newton came to develop calculus much earlier than Leibniz.BOOK, Newman, James Roy,archive.org/details/world1ofmathemati00newm/page/57/mode/1up?q=Newton, The World of Mathematics: A Small Library of the Literature of Mathematics from AÊ»h-mosÃ© the Scribe to Albert Einstein, Simon and Schuster, 1956, 58, en, {{Citation |last=Sastry |first=S.Subramanya |title=The Newton-Leibniz controversy over the invention of the calculus |url=https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~sastry/hs323/calculus.pdf |pages=3 |access-date=12 October 2023 |publisher=University of Wisconsinâ€“Madison |doi=10.1214/ss/1028905930 |doi-access=free |archive-date=8 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240108141304pages.cs.wisc.edu/~sastry/hs323/calculus.pdf |url-status=live }}WEB, 17 July 2017, How and Why did Newton Develop Such Complicated Mathematics?,futurism.com/how-and-why-did-newton-develop-such-a-complicated-math, 12 October 2023, Futurism, 20 October 2023,web.archive.org/web/20231020123525/https://futurism.com/how-and-why-did-newton-develop-such-a-complicated-math, live, Leibniz’s notation and “differential Method”, nowadays recognised as much more convenient notations, were adopted by continental European mathematicians, and after 1820 or so, also by British mathematicians.{{citation needed|date=December 2018}}His work extensively uses calculus in geometric form based on limiting values of the ratios of vanishingly small quantities: in the Principia itself, Newton gave demonstration of this under the name of “the method of first and last ratios“Newton, Principia, 1729 English translation, p. 41 {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151003114205books.google.com/books?id=Tm0FAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA41 |date=3 October 2015 }}. and explained why he put his expositions in this form,Newton, Principia, 1729 English translation, p. 54 {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160503022921books.google.com/books?id=Tm0FAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA54 |date=3 May 2016 }}. remarking also that “hereby the same thing is performed as by the method of indivisibles.“BOOK, Newton, Sir Isaac,books.google.com/books?id=N-hHAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA102, Newton’s Principia: The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, 1850, Geo. P. Putnam, 9 March 2019,web.archive.org/web/20190626230020/https://books.google.com/books?id=N-hHAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA102, 26 June 2019, live, Because of this, the Principia has been called “a book dense with the theory and application of the infinitesimal calculus” in modern timesClifford Truesdell, Essays in the History of Mechanics (1968), p. 99. and in Newton’s time “nearly all of it is of this calculus.“In the preface to the Marquis de L’Hospital’s Analyse des Infiniment Petits (Paris, 1696). His use of methods involving “one or more orders of the infinitesimally small” is present in his De motu corporum in gyrum of 1684Starting with De motu corporum in gyrum, see also (Latin) Theorem 1 {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160512135306books.google.com/books?id=uvMGAAAAcAAJ&pg=RA1-PA2 |date=12 May 2016 }}. and in his papers on motion “during the two decades preceding 1684”.Whiteside, D.T., ed. (1970). “The Mathematical principles underlying Newton’s Principia Mathematica”. Journal for the History of Astronomy. 1. Cambridge University Press. pp. 116â€“138.File:Sir Isaac Newton by Sir Godfrey Kneller, Bt.jpg|thumb|upright=0.75|Newton in 1702 by Godfrey Kneller Godfrey KnellerNewton had been reluctant to publish his calculus because he feared controversy and criticism.{{sfn|Stewart|2009|p=107}} He was close to the Swiss mathematician Nicolas Fatio de Duillier. In 1691, Duillier started to write a new version of Newton’s Principia, and corresponded with Leibniz.{{sfn|Westfall|1980|pp=538â€“539}} In 1693, the relationship between Duillier and Newton deteriorated and the book was never completed.BOOK, Stern, Keith,www.worldcat.org/oclc/317453194, Queers in history : the comprehensive encyclopedia of historical gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgenders, 2009, BenBella, 978-1-933771-87-8, Dallas, Tex., 317453194, 30 November 2022, 26 February 2024,web.archive.org/web/20240226144340/https://search.worldcat.org/title/317453194, live, Starting in 1699, other members{{who|date=December 2018}} of the Royal Society accused Leibniz of plagiarism.BOOK, Nowlan, Robert, Masters of Mathematics: The Problems They Solved, Why These Are Important, and What You Should Know about Them, Sense Publishers, 2017, 978-94-6300-891-4, Rotterdam, 136, The dispute then broke out in full force in 1711 when the Royal Society proclaimed in a study that it was Newton who was the true discoverer and labelled Leibniz a fraud; it was later found that Newton wrote the study’s concluding remarks on Leibniz. Thus began the bitter controversy which marred the lives of both Newton and Leibniz until the latter’s death in 1716.{{sfn|Ball|1908|p=356}}Newton is generally credited with the generalised binomial theorem, valid for any exponent. He discovered Newton’s identities, Newton’s method, classified cubic plane curves (polynomials of degree three in two variables), made substantial contributions to the theory of finite differences, and was the first to use fractional indices and to employ coordinate geometry to derive solutions to Diophantine equations. He approximated partial sums of the harmonic series by logarithms (a precursor to Euler’s summation formula) and was the first to use power series with confidence and to revert power series. Newton’s work on infinite series was inspired by Simon Stevin’s decimals.JOURNAL, BÅ‚aszczyk, P., Katz, M. G., Mikhail Katz, Sherry, D., 1, March 2013, Ten misconceptions from the history of analysis and their debunking, Foundations of Science, 18, 1, 43â€“74, 1202.4153, 10.1007/s10699-012-9285-8, 119134151,

Optics

File:Newton telescope replica 1668.jpg|thumb|A replica of the reflecting telescope Newton presented to the (Royal Society]] in 1672 (the first one he made in 1668 was loaned to an instrument maker but there is no further record of what happened to it).BOOK, King, Henry C.,books.google.com/books?id=KAWwzHlDVksC&q=history+of+the+telescope, The History of the Telescope, Courier Corporation, 1955, 978-0-486-43265-6, 74, 1 August 2013, 26 February 2024,web.archive.org/web/20240226144328/https://books.google.com/books?id=KAWwzHlDVksC&q=history+of+the+telescope#v=snippet&q=history%20of%20the%20telescope&f=false, live, )In 1666, Newton observed that the spectrum of colours exiting a prism in the position of minimum deviation is oblong, even when the light ray entering the prism is circular, which is to say, the prism refracts different colours by different angles.BOOK, Darrigol, Olivier,books.google.com/books?id=Ye_1AAAAQBAJ&pg=PAPA81, A History of Optics from Greek Antiquity to the Nineteenth Century, 2012, Oxford University Press, 978-0-19-964437-7, 81, 1 December 2018, 26 February 2024,web.archive.org/web/20240226144911/https://books.google.com/books?id=Ye_1AAAAQBAJ&pg=PAPA81#v=onepage&q&f=false, live, This led him to conclude that colour is a property intrinsic to light â€“ a point which had, until then, been a matter of debate.From 1670 to 1672, Newton lectured on optics.WEB, Newton, Isaac, Hydrostatics, Optics, Sound and Heat,cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-ADD-03970/, live,cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-ADD-03970/," title="web.archive.org/web/20120108215515cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-ADD-03970/,">web.archive.org/web/20120108215515cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-ADD-03970/, 8 January 2012, 10 January 2012, Cambridge University Digital Library, During this period he investigated the refraction of light, demonstrating that the multicoloured image produced by a prism, which he named a spectrum, could be recomposed into white light by a lens and a second prism.{{sfn|Ball|1908|p=324}} Modern scholarship has revealed that Newton’s analysis and resynthesis of white light owes a debt to corpuscular alchemy.William R. Newman, “Newton’s Early Optical Theory and its Debt to Chymistry”, in Danielle Jacquart and Michel Hochmann, eds., LumiÃ¨re et vision dans les sciences et dans les arts (Geneva: Droz, 2010), pp. 283â€“307. A free access online version of this article can be found at the Chymistry of Isaac Newton project {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160528020600webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/newton/html/Newton_optics-alchemy_Jacquart_paper.pdf |date=28 May 2016 }} (PDF)He showed that coloured light does not change its properties by separating out a coloured beam and shining it on various objects, and that regardless of whether reflected, scattered, or transmitted, the light remains the same colour. Thus, he observed that colour is the result of objects interacting with already-coloured light rather than objects generating the colour themselves. This is known as Newton’s theory of colour.{{sfn|Ball|1908|p=325}}File:Dispersive Prism Illustration.jpg|thumb|Illustration of a dispersive prism dispersive prismFrom this work, he concluded that the lens of any refracting telescope would suffer from the dispersion of light into colours (chromatic aberration). As a proof of the concept, he constructed a telescope using reflective mirrors instead of lenses as the objective to bypass that problem. Building the design, the first known functional reflecting telescope, today known as a Newtonian telescope, involved solving the problem of a suitable mirror material and shaping technique. Newton ground his own mirrors out of a custom composition of highly reflective speculum metal, using Newton’s rings to judge the quality of the optics for his telescopes. In late 1668, he was able to produce this first reflecting telescope. It was about eight inches long and it gave a clearer and larger image. In 1671, the Royal Society asked for a demonstration of his reflecting telescope.{{sfn|White|1997|p=168}} Their interest encouraged him to publish his notes, Of Colours,WEB, Newton, Isaac, Of Colours,www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/NATP00004, live,www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/NATP00004," title="web.archive.org/web/20141009051407www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/NATP00004,">web.archive.org/web/20141009051407www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/NATP00004, 9 October 2014, 6 October 2014, The Newton Project, which he later expanded into the work Opticks. When Robert Hooke criticised some of Newton’s ideas, Newton was so offended that he withdrew from public debate. Newton and Hooke had brief exchanges in 1679â€“80, when Hooke, appointed to manage the Royal Society’s correspondence, opened up a correspondence intended to elicit contributions from Newton to Royal Society transactions, which had the effect of stimulating Newton to work out a proof that the elliptical form of planetary orbits would result from a centripetal force inversely proportional to the square of the radius vector. But the two men remained generally on poor terms until Hooke’s death.Iliffe, Robert (2007) Newton. A very short introduction, Oxford University Press 2007File:Newton-letter-to-briggs 03.jpg|thumb|upright|Facsimile of a 1682 letter from Newton to William Briggs, commenting on Briggs’ A New Theory of Vision]]Newton argued that light is composed of particles or corpuscles, which were refracted by accelerating into a denser medium. He verged on soundlike waves to explain the repeated pattern of reflection and transmission by thin films (Opticks Bk. II, Props. 12), but still retained his theory of ‘fits’ that disposed corpuscles to be reflected or transmitted (Props.13). However, later physicists favoured a purely wavelike explanation of light to account for the interference patterns and the general phenomenon of diffraction. Today’s quantum mechanics, photons, and the idea of waveâ€“particle duality bear only a minor resemblance to Newton’s understanding of light.In his Hypothesis of Light of 1675, Newton posited the existence of the ether to transmit forces between particles. The contact with the Cambridge Platonist philosopher Henry More revived his interest in alchemy. He replaced the ether with occult forces based on Hermetic ideas of attraction and repulsion between particles. John Maynard Keynes, who acquired many of Newton’s writings on alchemy, stated that “Newton was not the first of the age of reason: He was the last of the magicians.” Newton’s contributions to science cannot be isolated from his interest in alchemy. This was at a time when there was no clear distinction between alchemy and science,{{cn|date=March 2024}} and had he not relied on the occult idea of action at a distance, across a vacuum, he might not have developed his theory of gravity.{{cn|date=March 2024}}In 1704, Newton published Opticks, in which he expounded his corpuscular theory of light. He considered light to be made up of extremely subtle corpuscles, that ordinary matter was made of grosser corpuscles and speculated that through a kind of alchemical transmutation “Are not gross Bodies and Light convertible into one another, ... and may not Bodies receive much of their Activity from the Particles of Light which enter their Composition?” Newton also constructed a primitive form of a frictional electrostatic generator, using a glass globe.Opticks, 2nd Ed 1706. Query 8.In his book Opticks, Newton was the first to show a diagram using a prism as a beam expander, and also the use of multiple-prism arrays. Some 278 years after Newton’s discussion, multiple-prism beam expanders became central to the development of narrow-linewidth tunable lasers. Also, the use of these prismatic beam expanders led to the multiple-prism dispersion theory.Subsequent to Newton, much has been amended. Young and Fresnel discarded Newton’s particle theory in favour of Huygens’ wave theory to show that colour is the visible manifestation of light’s wavelength. Science also slowly came to realise the difference between perception of colour and mathematisable optics. The German poet and scientist, Goethe, could not shake the Newtonian foundation but “one hole Goethe did find in Newton’s armour, ... Newton had committed himself to the doctrine that refraction without colour was impossible. He, therefore, thought that the object-glasses of telescopes must forever remain imperfect, achromatism and refraction being incompatible. This inference was proved by Dollond to be wrong.“Tyndall, John. (1880). Popular Science Monthly Volume 17, July. s:Popular Science Monthly/Volume 17/July 1880/Goethe’s FarbenleFile:Portrait of Sir Isaac Newton (4670220).jpg|thumb|upright|Engraving of Portrait of Newton by John Vanderbank John Vanderbank

Gravity

File:NewtonsPrincipia.jpg|thumb|upright=1.25|Newton’s own copy of Principia with Newton’s hand-written corrections for the second edition, now housed in the Wren Library at Trinity College, Cambridge Trinity College, CambridgeNewton had been developing his theory of gravitation as far back as 1665.BOOK, Struik, Dirk J.,archive.org/details/concisehistoryof02stru/mode/1up, A Concise History of Mathematics, Dover Publications, 1948, 151, 154, en, Dirk Jan Struik, WEB, McDonald, Kerry, 27 March 2020, How Isaac Newton Turned Isolation From the Great Plague Into a “Year of Wonders”,fee.org/articles/how-isaac-newton-turned-isolation-from-the-great-plague-into-a-year-of-wonders/, 14 October 2023, fee.org, en, 24 September 2023,web.archive.org/web/20230924131713/https://fee.org/articles/how-isaac-newton-turned-isolation-from-the-great-plague-into-a-year-of-wonders/, live, In 1679, Newton returned to his work on celestial mechanics by considering gravitation and its effect on the orbits of planets with reference to Kepler’s laws of planetary motion. This followed stimulation by a brief exchange of letters in 1679â€“80 with Hooke, who had been appointed Secretary of the Royal Society,BOOK, Inwood, Stephen, The Forgotten Genius, MacAdam/Cage Pub., San Francisco, 2003, 978-1-931561-56-3, 53006741,archive.org/details/forgottengeniusb00inwo, 247, and who opened a correspondence intended to elicit contributions from Newton to Royal Society transactions. Newton’s reawakening interest in astronomical matters received further stimulus by the appearance of a comet in the winter of 1680â€“1681, on which he corresponded with John Flamsteed.{{sfn|Westfall|1980|pp=391â€“392}} After the exchanges with Hooke, Newton worked out a proof that the elliptical form of planetary orbits would result from a centripetal force inversely proportional to the square of the radius vector. Newton communicated his results to Edmond Halley and to the Royal Society in , a tract written on about nine sheets which was copied into the Royal Society’s Register Book in December 1684.Whiteside, D.T., ed. (1974). Mathematical Papers of Isaac Newton, 1684â€“1691. 6. Cambridge University Press. p. 30. This tract contained the nucleus that Newton developed and expanded to form the Principia.The was published on 5 July 1687 with encouragement and financial help from Halley. In this work, Newton stated the three universal laws of motion. Together, these laws describe the relationship between any object, the forces acting upon it and the resulting motion, laying the foundation for classical mechanics. They contributed to many advances during the Industrial Revolution which soon followed and were not improved upon for more than 200 years. Many of these advances continue to be the underpinnings of non-relativistic technologies in the modern world. He used the Latin word gravitas (weight) for the effect that would become known as gravity, and defined the law of universal gravitation.BOOK, Schmitz, Kenneth S.,books.google.com/books?id=4WGdBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA251, Physical Chemistry: Multidisciplinary Applications in Society, Elsevier, 2018, 978-0-12-800599-6, Amsterdam, 251, 1 March 2020,web.archive.org/web/20200310132426/https://books.google.com/books?id=4WGdBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA251, 10 March 2020, live, In the same work, Newton presented a calculus-like method of geometrical analysis using ‘first and last ratios’, gave the first analytical determination (based on Boyle’s law) of the speed of sound in air, inferred the oblateness of Earth’s spheroidal figure, accounted for the precession of the equinoxes as a result of the Moon’s gravitational attraction on the Earth’s oblateness, initiated the gravitational study of the irregularities in the motion of the Moon, provided a theory for the determination of the orbits of comets, and much more. Newton’s biographer David Brewster reported that the complexity of applying his theory of gravity to the motion of the moon was so great it affected Newton’s health: “[H]e was deprived of his appetite and sleep” during his work on the problem in 1692â€“93, and told the astronomer John Machin that “his head never ached but when he was studying the subject”. According to Brewster, Edmund Halley also told John Conduitt that when pressed to complete his analysis Newton “always replied that it made his head ache, and kept him awake so often, that he would think of it no more”. [Emphasis in original]WEB, Brewster, Sir David, 22 March 1860, Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton,books.google.com/books?id=acBV7QHgMIAC&q=head+ache&pg=PA3, Edmonston and Douglas, Google Books, 22 March 2023, 19 April 2023,web.archive.org/web/20230419215520/https://books.google.com/books?id=acBV7QHgMIAC&q=head+ache&pg=PA3, live, Newton made clear his heliocentric view of the Solar Systemâ€”developed in a somewhat modern way because already in the mid-1680s he recognised the “deviation of the Sun” from the centre of gravity of the Solar System.See Curtis Wilson, “The Newtonian achievement in astronomy”, pp. 233â€“274 in R Taton & C Wilson (eds) (1989) The General History of Astronomy, Volume, 2A’, at p. 233 {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151003121307books.google.com/books?id=rkQKU-wfPYMC&pg=PA233 |date=3 October 2015 }}. For Newton, it was not precisely the centre of the Sun or any other body that could be considered at rest, but rather “the common centre of gravity of the Earth, the Sun and all the Planets is to be esteem’d the Centre of the World”, and this centre of gravity “either is at rest or moves uniformly forward in a right line”. (Newton adopted the “at rest” alternative in view of common consent that the centre, wherever it was, was at rest.)Text quotations are from 1729 translation of Newton’s Principia, Book 3 (1729 vol.2) at pp. 232â€“33 [233].Newton’s postulate of an invisible force able to act over vast distances led to him being criticised for introducing “occult agencies” into science.Edelglass et al., Matter and Mind, {{isbn|0-940262-45-2}}. p. 54 Later, in the second edition of the Principia (1713), Newton firmly rejected such criticisms in a concluding General Scholium, writing that it was enough that the phenomena implied a gravitational attraction, as they did; but they did not so far indicate its cause, and it was both unnecessary and improper to frame hypotheses of things that were not implied by the phenomena. (Here Newton used what became his famous expression .On the meaning and origins of this expression, see Kirsten Walsh, Does Newton feign an hypothesis? {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140714120054blogs.otago.ac.nz/emxphi/2010/10/does-newton-feign-an-hypothesis/ |date=14 July 2014 }}, Early Modern Experimental Philosophy {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110721051523blogs.otago.ac.nz/emxphi/ |date=21 July 2011 }}, 18 October 2010.)With the , Newton became internationally recognised.{{sfn|Westfall|1980|loc=Chapter 11}} He acquired a circle of admirers, including the Swiss-born mathematician Nicolas Fatio de Duillier.WEB, Hatch, Professor Robert A., Newton Timeline,web.clas.ufl.edu/users/ufhatch/pages/13-NDFE/newton/05-newton-timeline-m.htm, dead,web.clas.ufl.edu/users/ufhatch/pages/13-NDFE/newton/05-newton-timeline-m.htm," title="web.archive.org/web/20120802071026web.clas.ufl.edu/users/ufhatch/pages/13-NDFE/newton/05-newton-timeline-m.htm,">web.archive.org/web/20120802071026web.clas.ufl.edu/users/ufhatch/pages/13-NDFE/newton/05-newton-timeline-m.htm, 2 August 2012, 13 August 2012, In 1710, Newton found 72 of the 78 “species” of cubic curves and categorised them into four types.JOURNAL, Bloye, Nicole, Huggett, Stephen, 2011, Newton, the geometer,stephenhuggett.com/Newton.pdf, dead, Newsletter of the European Mathematical Society, 82, 19â€“27, 2896438,stephenhuggett.com/Newton.pdf," title="web.archive.org/web/20230308041757stephenhuggett.com/Newton.pdf,">web.archive.org/web/20230308041757stephenhuggett.com/Newton.pdf, 8 March 2023, 19 February 2023, In 1717, and probably with Newton’s help, James Stirling proved that every cubic was one of these four types. Newton also claimed that the four types could be obtained by plane projection from one of them, and this was proved in 1731, four years after his death.Conics and Cubics, Robert Bix. Undergraduate Texts in Mathematics, 2nd ed., 2006, Springer Verlag.

Later life

Royal Mint

File:Newton 25.jpg|thumb|upright|Isaac Newton in old age in 1712, portrait by Sir James Thornhill Sir James ThornhillIn the 1690s, Newton wrote a number of religious tracts dealing with the literal and symbolic interpretation of the Bible. A manuscript Newton sent to John Locke in which he disputed the fidelity of (1 John 5:7)â€”the Johannine Commaâ€”and its fidelity to the original manuscripts of the New Testament, remained unpublished until 1785.WEB, John Locke Manuscripts â€“ Chronological Listing: 1690,www.libraries.psu.edu/tas/locke/mss/c1690.html, live,web.archive.org/web/20170709035722/https://www.libraries.psu.edu/tas/locke/mss/c1690.html, 9 July 2017, 20 January 2013, psu.edu, ; and John C. Attig, John Locke Bibliography â€” Chapter 5, Religion, 1751â€“1900 {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121112070820www.libraries.psu.edu/tas/locke/bib/ch5c.html#01160 |date=12 November 2012 }}Newton was also a member of the Parliament of England for Cambridge University in 1689 and 1701, but according to some accounts his only comments were to complain about a cold draught in the chamber and request that the window be closed.{{sfn|White|1997|p=232}} He was, however, noted by Cambridge diarist Abraham de la Pryme to have rebuked students who were frightening locals by claiming that a house was haunted.NEWS, Sawer, Patrick, 6 September 2016, What students should avoid during fresher’s week (100 years ago and now), The Daily Telegraph,www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/09/06/what-students-should-avoid-during-freshers-week-100-years-ago-an/, live, subscription, 7 September 2016,ghostarchive.org/archive/20220110/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/09/06/what-students-should-avoid-during-freshers-week-100-years-ago-an/, 10 January 2022, {{cbignore}}Newton moved to London to take up the post of warden of the Royal Mint during the reign of King William III in 1696, a position that he had obtained through the patronage of Charles Montagu, 1st Earl of Halifax, then Chancellor of the Exchequer. He took charge of England’s great recoining, trod on the toes of Lord Lucas, Governor of the Tower, and secured the job of deputy comptroller of the temporary Chester branch for Edmond Halley. Newton became perhaps the best-known Master of the Mint upon the death of Thomas Neale in 1699, a position Newton held for the last 30 years of his life.EPISODE, Isaac Newton: Physicist And ... Crime Fighter?,www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105012144, 1 August 2014, Science Friday, NPR, Transcript,www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=105012144, 5 June 2009, 1 November 2014,www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105012144," title="web.archive.org/web/20141101074330www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105012144,">web.archive.org/web/20141101074330www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105012144, live, {{sfn|Levenson |2010}} These appointments were intended as sinecures, but Newton took them seriously. He retired from his Cambridge duties in 1701, and exercised his authority to reform the currency and punish clippers and counterfeiters.As Warden, and afterwards as Master, of the Royal Mint, Newton estimated that 20 percent of the coins taken in during the Great Recoinage of 1696 were counterfeit. Counterfeiting was high treason, punishable by the felon being hanged, drawn and quartered. Despite this, convicting even the most flagrant criminals could be extremely difficult, but Newton proved equal to the task.{{sfn|White|1997|p=259}}Disguised as a (:wikt:habituÃ©|habituÃ©) of bars and taverns, he gathered much of that evidence himself.{{sfn|White|1997|p=267}} For all the barriers placed to prosecution, and separating the branches of government, English law still had ancient and formidable customs of authority. Newton had himself made a justice of the peace in all the home counties. A draft letter regarding the matter is included in Newton’s personal first edition of PhilosophiÃ¦ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, which he must have been amending at the time.WEB, Newton, Isaac, PhilosophiÃ¦ Naturalis Principia Mathematica,cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/PR-ADV-B-00039-00001/, live,cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/PR-ADV-B-00039-00001/," title="web.archive.org/web/20120108031556cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/PR-ADV-B-00039-00001/,">web.archive.org/web/20120108031556cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/PR-ADV-B-00039-00001/, 8 January 2012, 10 January 2012, Cambridge University Digital Library, 265â€“66, Then he conducted more than 100 cross-examinations of witnesses, informers, and suspects between June 1698 and Christmas 1699. Newton successfully prosecuted 28 coiners.{{sfn|Westfall|2007|p=73}}File:ENG COA Newton.svg|thumb|upright|Coat of arms of the Newton family of (Great Gonerby]], Lincolnshire, afterwards used by Sir IsaacBOOK, Wagner, Anthony,archive.org/details/historicheraldry0000wagn/page/85, Historic Heraldry of Britain, Phillimore, 1972, 978-0-85033-022-9, 2nd, London and Chichester, 85, Anthony Wagner, ; and BOOK, Genealogical Memoranda Relating to the Family of Newton, London, Taylor and Co., 1871,archive.org/details/genealogicalmemo00inlond, )Newton was made president of the Royal Society in 1703 and an associate of the French AcadÃ©mie des Sciences. In his position at the Royal Society, Newton made an enemy of John Flamsteed, the Astronomer Royal, by prematurely publishing Flamsteed’s Historia Coelestis Britannica, which Newton had used in his studies.{{sfn|White|1997|p=317}}

Knighthood

In April 1705, Queen Anne knighted Newton during a royal visit to Trinity College, Cambridge. The knighthood is likely to have been motivated by political considerations connected with the parliamentary election in May 1705, rather than any recognition of Newton’s scientific work or services as Master of the Mint.“The Queen’s ‘great Assistance’ to Newton’s election was his knighting, an honor bestowed not for his contributions to science, nor for his service at the Mint, but for the greater glory of party politics in the election of 1705.” {{harvnb|Westfall|1994|p=245}} Newton was the second scientist to be knighted, after Francis Bacon.WEB, 20 June 2016, This Day in History: Isaac Newton is Knighted,www.historychannel.com.au/classroom/day-in-history/553/isaac-newton-is-knighted, live,www.historychannel.com.au/classroom/day-in-history/553/isaac-newton-is-knighted," title="web.archive.org/web/20140819103011www.historychannel.com.au/classroom/day-in-history/553/isaac-newton-is-knighted,">web.archive.org/web/20140819103011www.historychannel.com.au/classroom/day-in-history/553/isaac-newton-is-knighted, 19 August 2014, 18 August 2014, History Channel, A&E Television Networks, ;, and BOOK, Barnham, Kay, Isaac Newton, 2014, Raintree, 978-1-4109-6235-5, 26, {{google books, 2f5LAgAAQBAJ, yes, }}As a result of a report written by Newton on 21 September 1717 to the Lords Commissioners of His Majesty’s Treasury, the bimetallic relationship between gold coins and silver coins was changed by royal proclamation on 22 December 1717, forbidding the exchange of gold guineas for more than 21 silver shillings.On the Value of Gold and Silver in European Currencies and the Consequences on the Worldwide Gold- and Silver-Trade {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170406191205www.pierre-marteau.com/editions/1701-25-mint-reports/report-1717-09-25.html |date=6 April 2017 }}, Sir Isaac Newton, 21 September 1717; “By The King, A Proclamation Declaring the Rates at which Gold shall be current in Payments”. Royal Numismatic Society. V. April 1842 â€“ January 1843. This inadvertently resulted in a silver shortage as silver coins were used to pay for imports, while exports were paid for in gold, effectively moving Britain from the silver standard to its first gold standard. It is a matter of debate as to whether he intended to do this or not.JOURNAL, Fay, C. R., 1 January 1935, Newton and the Gold Standard, Cambridge Historical Journal, 5, 1, 109â€“17, 10.1017/S1474691300001256, 3020836, It has been argued that Newton conceived of his work at the Mint as a continuation of his alchemical work.NEWS, 12 September 2006, Sir Isaac Newton’s Unpublished Manuscripts Explain Connections He Made Between Alchemy and Economics, Georgia Tech Research News,gtresearchnews.gatech.edu/newsrelease/newton.htm, dead, 30 July 2014,gtresearchnews.gatech.edu/newsrelease/newton.htm," title="archive.today/20130217100410gtresearchnews.gatech.edu/newsrelease/newton.htm,">archive.today/20130217100410gtresearchnews.gatech.edu/newsrelease/newton.htm, 17 February 2013, Newton was invested in the South Sea Company and lost some Â£20,000 (Â£4.4 million in 2020Eric W. Nye, Pounds Sterling to Dollars: Historical Conversion of Currency {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210815124946www.uwyo.edu/numimage/Currency.htm |date=15 August 2021 }}. Retrieved: 5 October 2020) when it collapsed in around 1720.WEB, Holodny, Elena, 21 January 2016, Isaac Newton was a genius, but even he lost millions in the stock market,www.businessinsider.com.au/isaac-newton-lost-a-fortune-on-englands-hottest-stock-2016-1, live,www.businessinsider.com.au/isaac-newton-lost-a-fortune-on-englands-hottest-stock-2016-1," title="web.archive.org/web/20160325191327www.businessinsider.com.au/isaac-newton-lost-a-fortune-on-englands-hottest-stock-2016-1,">web.archive.org/web/20160325191327www.businessinsider.com.au/isaac-newton-lost-a-fortune-on-englands-hottest-stock-2016-1, 25 March 2016, 21 December 2019, Business Insider, Toward the end of his life, Newton took up residence at Cranbury Park, near Winchester, with his niece and her husband, until his death.WEB, Yonge, Charlotte M., Charlotte M. Yonge, 1898, Cranbury and Brambridge,www.online-literature.com/charlotte-yonge/john-keble/6/, live,www.online-literature.com/charlotte-yonge/john-keble/6/," title="web.archive.org/web/20081208223436www.online-literature.com/charlotte-yonge/john-keble/6/,">web.archive.org/web/20081208223436www.online-literature.com/charlotte-yonge/john-keble/6/, 8 December 2008, 23 September 2009, John Keble’s Parishes â€“ Chapter 6, online-literature.com, His half-niece, Catherine Barton,{{sfn|Westfall|1980|p=44}} served as his hostess in social affairs at his house on Jermyn Street in London; he was her “very loving Uncle”,{{sfn|Westfall|1980|p=595}} according to his letter to her when she was recovering from smallpox.

Death

(File:PSM V69 D480 Death mask of isaac newton.png|alt=Isaac Newton’s death mask|thumb|upright|Death mask of Newton, photographed {{circa|1906}})Newton died in his sleep in London on 20 March 1727 (OS 20 March 1726; NS 31 March 1727).{{efn|name=OSNS}} He was given a ceremonial funeral, attended by nobles, scientists, and philosophers, and was buried in Westminster Abbey among kings and queens. He was the first scientist to be buried in the abbey.{{London Gazette |issue=6569 |date=1 April 1727 |page=7 }} Voltaire may have been present at his funeral.Dobre and Nyden suggest that there is no clear evidence that Voltaire was present; see p. 89 of BOOK, Dobre, Mihnea, Cartesian Empiricism, Nyden, Tammy, Springer, 2013, 978-94-007-7690-6, A bachelor, he had divested much of his estate to relatives during his last years, and died intestate. His papers went to John Conduitt and Catherine Barton.Shortly after his death, a plaster death mask was moulded of Newton. It was used by Flemish sculptor John Michael Rysbrack in making a sculpture of Newton.WEB, Newton’s Death Mask,huntington.org/verso/newtons-death-mask, 7 August 2023, The Huntington, Aug 2, 2011, John, Vining, 7 August 2023,web.archive.org/web/20230807122527/https://huntington.org/verso/newtons-death-mask, live, It is now held by the Royal Society,WEB, Death mask of Isaac Newton,pictures.royalsociety.org/image-rs-8492, 7 August 2023, Royal Society Picture Library, 7 August 2023,web.archive.org/web/20230807122526/https://pictures.royalsociety.org/image-rs-8492, live, who created a 3D scan of it in 2012.WEB, Newton’s death mask scanned in 3D, 1 October 2012,royalsociety.org/news/2012/newton-death-mask-3D/, 7 August 2023, Royal Society, 9 June 2023,web.archive.org/web/20230609204741/https://royalsociety.org/news/2012/newton-death-mask-3D/, live, WEB, Schultz, Colin, Isaac Newton’s Death Mask: Now Available in Digital 3D,www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/isaac-newtons-death-mask-now-available-in-digital-3d-55650548/, October 1, 2012, 7 August 2023, Smithsonian Magazine, 7 August 2023,web.archive.org/web/20230807122812/https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/isaac-newtons-death-mask-now-available-in-digital-3d-55650548/, live, Newton’s hair was posthumously examined and found to contain mercury, probably resulting from his alchemical pursuits. Mercury poisoning could explain Newton’s eccentricity in late life.

Personality

Although it was claimed that he was once engaged,{{efn|name=claim|This claim was made by William Stukeley in 1727, in a letter about Newton written to Richard Mead. Charles Hutton, who in the late eighteenth century collected oral traditions about earlier scientists, declared that there “do not appear to be any sufficient reason for his never marrying, if he had an inclination so to do. It is much more likely that he had a constitutional indifference to the state, and even to the sex in general.“Hutton, Charles (1795/6). A Mathematical and Philosophical Dictionary. vol. 2. p. 100.}} Newton never married. The French writer and philosopher Voltaire, who was in London at the time of Newton’s funeral, said that he “was never sensible to any passion, was not subject to the common frailties of mankind, nor had any commerce with womenâ€”a circumstance which was assured me by the physician and surgeon who attended him in his last moments.“BOOK, Voltaire, Letters on England, 1894, Cassell, 100, 14,archive.org/stream/lettersonenglan00voltgoog#page/n102, There exists a widespread belief that Newton died a virgin, and writers as diverse as mathematician Charles Hutton,BOOK, Hutton, Charles,books.google.com/books?id=_xk2AAAAQAAJ&pg=PAPA100, A Philosophical and Mathematical Dictionary Containing ... Memoirs of the Lives and Writings of the Most Eminent Authors, Volume 2, 1815, 100, Charles Hutton, 1 December 2018, 26 February 2024,web.archive.org/web/20240226144934/https://books.google.com/books?id=_xk2AAAAQAAJ&pg=PAPA100#v=onepage&q&f=false, live, economist John Maynard Keynes,WEB, Keynes, John Maynard, Newton: the Man,www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Extras/Keynes_Newton.html, live,www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Extras/Keynes_Newton.html," title="web.archive.org/web/20190617095839www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Extras/Keynes_Newton.html,">web.archive.org/web/20190617095839www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Extras/Keynes_Newton.html, 17 June 2019, 11 September 2012, University of St Andrews School of Mathematics and Statistics, and physicist Carl Sagan have commented on it.BOOK, Sagan, Carl, {{Google books, Cl06FjKX6doC, yes, |title=Cosmos |date=1980 |publisher=Random House |isbn=978-0-394-50294-6 |location=New York |page=68 |author-link=Carl Sagan}}{{anchor|Duillier}}Newton had a close friendship with the Swiss mathematician Nicolas Fatio de Duillier, whom he met in London around 1689â€”some of their correspondence has survived.WEB, Duillier, Nicholas Fatio de (1664â€“1753) mathematician and natural philosopher,janus.lib.cam.ac.uk/db/node.xsp?id=CV%2FPers%2FDuillier%2C%20Nicholas%20Fatio%20de%20%281664-1753%29%20mathematician%20and%20natural%20philosopher, live,janus.lib.cam.ac.uk/db/node.xsp?id=CV%2FPers%2FDuillier%2C%20Nicholas%20Fatio%20de%20%281664-1753%29%20mathematician%20and%20natural%20philosopher," title="web.archive.org/web/20130701114749janus.lib.cam.ac.uk/db/node.xsp?id=CV%2FPers%2FDuillier%2C%20Nicholas%20Fatio%20de%20%281664-1753%29%20mathematician%20and%20natural%20philosopher,">web.archive.org/web/20130701114749janus.lib.cam.ac.uk/db/node.xsp?id=CV%2FPers%2FDuillier%2C%20Nicholas%20Fatio%20de%20%281664-1753%29%20mathematician%20and%20natural%20philosopher, 1 July 2013, 22 March 2013, Janus database, WEB, Collection Guide: Fatio de Duillier, Nicolas [Letters to Isaac Newton],www.oac.cdlib.org/search?style=oac4;Institution=UCLA::Clark%20%28William%20Andrews%29%20Memorial%20Library;idT=4859632, live,www.oac.cdlib.org/search?style=oac4;Institution=UCLA::Clark%20%28William%20Andrews%29%20Memorial%20Library;idT=4859632," title="web.archive.org/web/20130531055908www.oac.cdlib.org/search?style=oac4;Institution=UCLA::Clark%20%28William%20Andrews%29%20Memorial%20Library;idT=4859632,">web.archive.org/web/20130531055908www.oac.cdlib.org/search?style=oac4;Institution=UCLA::Clark%20%28William%20Andrews%29%20Memorial%20Library;idT=4859632, 31 May 2013, 22 March 2013, Online Archive of California, Their relationship came to an abrupt and unexplained end in 1693, and at the same time Newton suffered a nervous breakdown,{{harvnb|Westfall| 1980|pp= 493â€“497}} on the friendship with Fatio, pp. 531â€“540 on Newton’s breakdown. which included sending wild accusatory letters to his friends Samuel Pepys and John Locke. His note to the latter included the charge that Locke had endeavoured to “embroil” him with “woemen & by other means”.{{sfn|Manuel|1968|p=219}}Newton was relatively modest about his achievements, writing in a letter to Robert Hooke in February 1676, “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.“Letter from Isaac Newton to Robert Hooke, 5 February 1676, as transcribed in BOOK, Maury, Jean-Pierre,books.google.com/books?id=8N5tQgAACAAJ, Newton: Understanding the Cosmos, Thames & Hudson, 1992, 978-0-500-30023-7, “DÃ©couvertes Gallimard, New Horizons” series, London, Paris, I. Mark, 18 October 2020,web.archive.org/web/20201221174716/https://books.google.com/books?id=8N5tQgAACAAJ, 21 December 2020, live, 1990, Two writers think that the sentence, written at a time when Newton and Hooke were in dispute over optical discoveries, was an oblique attack on Hooke (said to have been short and hunchbacked), rather thanâ€”or in addition toâ€”a statement of modesty.John Gribbin (2002) Science: A History 1543â€“2001, p. 164.{{sfn|White|1997|p=187}} On the other hand, the widely known proverb about standing on the shoulders of giants, published among others by seventeenth-century poet George Herbert (a former orator of the University of Cambridge and fellow of Trinity College) in his (1651), had as its main point that “a dwarf on a giant’s shoulders sees farther of the two”, and so its effect as an analogy would place Newton himself rather than Hooke as the ‘dwarf’.In a later memoir, Newton wrote, “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.”Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton (1855) by Sir David Brewster (Volume II. Ch. 27)

Theology

Religious views

Although born into an Anglican family, by his thirties Newton held a Christian faith that, had it been made public, would not have been considered orthodox by mainstream Christianity,Richard S. Westfall â€“ Indiana University BOOK,galileo.rice.edu/Catalog/NewFiles/newton.html, The Galileo Project, (Rice University), 5 July 2008,galileo.rice.edu/Catalog/NewFiles/newton.html," title="web.archive.org/web/20200929133323galileo.rice.edu/Catalog/NewFiles/newton.html,">web.archive.org/web/20200929133323galileo.rice.edu/Catalog/NewFiles/newton.html, 29 September 2020, live, with one historian labelling him a heretic.JOURNAL, Snobelen, Stephen D., December 1999, Isaac Newton, heretic: the strategies of a Nicodemite, The British Journal for the History of Science, 32, 4, 381â€“419, 10.1017/S0007087499003751, 4027945, 145208136, By 1672, he had started to record his theological researches in notebooks which he showed to no one and which have only been available for public examination since 1972.{{sfn|Katz|1992|p=63}} Over half of what Newton wrote concerned theology and alchemy, and most has never been printed.{{sfn|Katz|1992|p=63}} His writings demonstrate an extensive knowledge of early Church writings and show that in the conflict between Athanasius and Arius which defined the Creed, he took the side of Arius, the loser, who rejected the conventional view of the Trinity. Newton “recognized Christ as a divine mediator between God and man, who was subordinate to the Father who created him.“{{sfn|Westfall|1980|p=315}} He was especially interested in prophecy, but for him, “the great apostasy was trinitarianism.“{{sfn|Westfall|1980|p=321}}Newton tried unsuccessfully to obtain one of the two fellowships that exempted the holder from the ordination requirement. At the last moment in 1675 he received a dispensation from the government that excused him and all future holders of the Lucasian chair.{{sfn|Westfall|1980|pp=331â€“34}}In Newton’s eyes, worshipping Christ as God was idolatry, to him the fundamental sin.{{sfn|Westfall|1994|p=124}} In 1999, historian Stephen D. Snobelen wrote, “Isaac Newton was a heretic. But ... he never made a public declaration of his private faithâ€”which the orthodox would have deemed extremely radical. He hid his faith so well that scholars are still unraveling his personal beliefs.” Snobelen concludes that Newton was at least a Socinian sympathiser (he owned and had thoroughly read at least eight Socinian books), possibly an Arian and almost certainly an anti-trinitarian.File:Newton-WilliamBlake crop.jpg|thumb|Newton (1795, detail) by William Blake. Newton is depicted critically as a “divine geometer”.WEB, 25 September 2013, Newton, object 1 (Butlin 306) “Newton”,www.blakearchive.org/exist/blake/archive/copyinfo.xq?copyid=but306.1, dead,www.blakearchive.org/exist/blake/archive/copyinfo.xq?copyid=but306.1," title="web.archive.org/web/20130927214741www.blakearchive.org/exist/blake/archive/copyinfo.xq?copyid=but306.1,">web.archive.org/web/20130927214741www.blakearchive.org/exist/blake/archive/copyinfo.xq?copyid=but306.1, 27 September 2013, 25 September 2013, William Blake Archive William Blake ArchiveAlthough the laws of motion and universal gravitation became Newton’s best-known discoveries, he warned against using them to view the Universe as a mere machine, as if akin to a great clock. He said, “So then gravity may put the planets into motion, but without the Divine Power it could never put them into such a circulating motion, as they have about the sun”.BOOK, Newton, Isaac,books.google.com/books?id=Dz2FzJqaJMUC&q=%22gravity%20may%20put%20the%20planets%20into%20motion%22&pg=PA436, Isaaci Newtoni Opera quae exstant omnia, 1782, Joannes Nichols, London, 436â€“37, 18 October 2020,web.archive.org/web/20210414055022/https://books.google.com/books?id=Dz2FzJqaJMUC&q=%22gravity%20may%20put%20the%20planets%20into%20motion%22&pg=PA436, 14 April 2021, live, Along with his scientific fame, Newton’s studies of the Bible and of the early Church Fathers were also noteworthy. Newton wrote works on textual criticism, most notably An Historical Account of Two Notable Corruptions of Scripture and s:Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel|Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John]].Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170120113904www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16878 |date=20 January 2017 }} 1733 He placed the crucifixion of Jesus Christ at 3 April, AD 33, which agrees with one traditionally accepted date.John P. Meier, (John P. Meier#A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus|A Marginal Jew), v. 1, pp. 382â€“402. after narrowing the years to 30 or 33, provisionally judges 30 most likely.He believed in a rationally immanent world, but he rejected the hylozoism implicit in Leibniz and Baruch Spinoza. The ordered and dynamically informed Universe could be understood, and must be understood, by an active reason. In his correspondence, Newton claimed that in writing the Principia “I had an eye upon such Principles as might work with considering men for the belief of a Deity”.Newton to Richard Bentley 10 December 1692, in Turnbull et al. (1959â€“77), vol 3, p. 233. He saw evidence of design in the system of the world: “Such a wonderful uniformity in the planetary system must be allowed the effect of choice”. But Newton insisted that divine intervention would eventually be required to reform the system, due to the slow growth of instabilities.Opticks, 2nd Ed 1706. Query 31. For this, Leibniz lampooned him: “God Almighty wants to wind up his watch from time to time: otherwise it would cease to move. He had not, it seems, sufficient foresight to make it a perpetual motion.“H.G. Alexander (ed) The Leibniz-Clarke correspondence, Manchester University Press, 1998, p. 11.Newton’s position was vigorously defended by his follower Samuel Clarke in a famous correspondence. A century later, Pierre-Simon Laplace’s work Celestial Mechanics had a natural explanation for why the planet orbits do not require periodic divine intervention.JOURNAL, Tyson, Neil Degrasse, Neil deGrasse Tyson, 1 November 2005, The Perimeter of Ignorance,www.haydenplanetarium.org/tyson/read/2005/11/01/the-perimeter-of-ignorance, dead, Natural History Magazine,www.haydenplanetarium.org/tyson/read/2005/11/01/the-perimeter-of-ignorance," title="web.archive.org/web/20180906154623www.haydenplanetarium.org/tyson/read/2005/11/01/the-perimeter-of-ignorance,">web.archive.org/web/20180906154623www.haydenplanetarium.org/tyson/read/2005/11/01/the-perimeter-of-ignorance, 6 September 2018, 7 January 2016, The contrast between Laplace’s mechanistic worldview and Newton’s one is the most strident considering the famous answer which the French scientist gave Napoleon, who had criticised him for the absence of the Creator in the MÃ©canique cÃ©leste: “Sire, j’ai pu me passer de cette hypothÃ¨se” (“Sir, I didn’t need this hypothesis“).Dijksterhuis, E. J. The Mechanization of the World Picture, IV 329â€“330, Oxford University Press, 1961. The author’s final comment on this episode is:“The mechanization of the world picture led with irresistible coherence to the conception of God as a sort of ‘retired engineer’, and from here to God’s complete elimination it took just one more step”.Scholars long debated whether Newton disputed the doctrine of the Trinity. His first biographer, David Brewster, who compiled his manuscripts, interpreted Newton as questioning the veracity of some passages used to support the Trinity, but never denying the doctrine of the Trinity as such.Brewster states that Newton was never known as an Arian during his lifetime, it was William Whiston, an Arian, who first argued that “Sir Isaac Newton was so hearty for the Baptists, as well as for the Eusebians or Arians, that he sometimes suspected these two were the two witnesses in the Revelations,” while others like Hopton Haynes (a Mint employee and Humanitarian), “mentioned to Richard Baron, that Newton held the same doctrine as himself”. David Brewster. Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton. p. 268. In the twentieth century, encrypted manuscripts written by Newton and bought by John Maynard Keynes (among others) were deciphered and it became known that Newton did indeed reject Trinitarianism.

Religious thought

Newton and Robert Boyle’s approach to the mechanical philosophy was promoted by rationalist pamphleteers as a viable alternative to the pantheists and enthusiasts, and was accepted hesitantly by orthodox preachers as well as dissident preachers like the latitudinarians. The clarity and simplicity of science was seen as a way to combat the emotional and metaphysical superlatives of both superstitious enthusiasm and the threat of atheism, and at the same time, the second wave of English deists used Newton’s discoveries to demonstrate the possibility of a “Natural Religion”.The attacks made against pre-Enlightenment “magical thinking”, and the mystical elements of Christianity, were given their foundation with Boyle’s mechanical conception of the universe. Newton gave Boyle’s ideas their completion through mathematical proofs and, perhaps more importantly, was very successful in popularising them.

Alchemy

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}}Of an estimated ten million words of writing in Newton’s papers, about one million deal with alchemy. Many of Newton’s writings on alchemy are copies of other manuscripts, with his own annotations. Alchemical texts mix artisanal knowledge with philosophical speculation, often hidden behind layers of wordplay, allegory, and imagery to protect craft secrets.JOURNAL, Meyer, Michal, 2014, Gold, secrecy and prestige,www.sciencehistory.org/distillations/magazine/gold-secrecy-and-prestige, live, Chemical Heritage Magazine, 32, 1, 42â€“43,web.archive.org/web/20180320230826/https://www.sciencehistory.org/distillations/magazine/gold-secrecy-and-prestige, 20 March 2018, 20 March 2018, Some of the content contained in Newton’s papers could have been considered heretical by the church.In 1888, after spending sixteen years cataloguing Newton’s papers, Cambridge University kept a small number and returned the rest to the Earl of Portsmouth. In 1936, a descendant offered the papers for sale at Sotheby’s. The collection was broken up and sold for a total of about Â£9,000.JOURNAL, Greshko, Michael, 4 April 2016, Isaac Newton’s Lost Alchemy Recipe Rediscovered,news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/04/160404-isaac-newton-alchemy-mercury-recipe-chemistry-science/, dead, National Geographic,news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/04/160404-isaac-newton-alchemy-mercury-recipe-chemistry-science/," title="web.archive.org/web/20160426031049news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/04/160404-isaac-newton-alchemy-mercury-recipe-chemistry-science/,">web.archive.org/web/20160426031049news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/04/160404-isaac-newton-alchemy-mercury-recipe-chemistry-science/, 26 April 2016, 25 April 2016, John Maynard Keynes was one of about three dozen bidders who obtained part of the collection at auction. Keynes went on to reassemble an estimated half of Newton’s collection of papers on alchemy before donating his collection to Cambridge University in 1946.MAGAZINE, Mann, Adam, 14 May 2014, The Strange, Secret History of Isaac Newton’s Papers, Wired, limited,www.wired.com/2014/05/newton-papers-q-and-a/, live, 25 April 2016,web.archive.org/web/20170911221912/https://www.wired.com/2014/05/newton-papers-q-and-a/, 11 September 2017, JOURNAL, Kean, Sam, 2011, Newton, The Last Magician,www.neh.gov/humanities/2011/januaryfebruary/feature/newton-the-last-magician, live, Humanities, 32, 1,www.neh.gov/humanities/2011/januaryfebruary/feature/newton-the-last-magician," title="web.archive.org/web/20160413235352www.neh.gov/humanities/2011/januaryfebruary/feature/newton-the-last-magician,">web.archive.org/web/20160413235352www.neh.gov/humanities/2011/januaryfebruary/feature/newton-the-last-magician, 13 April 2016, 25 April 2016, BOOK, Dry, Sarah, The Newton papers : the strange and true odyssey of Isaac Newton’s manuscripts, 2014, Oxford University Press, 978-0-19-995104-8, Oxford, All of Newton’s known writings on alchemy are currently being put online in a project undertaken by Indiana University: “The Chymistry of Isaac Newton“WEB, The Chymistry of Isaac Newton,webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/newton/, live,webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/newton/," title="web.archive.org/web/20160426013127webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/newton/,">web.archive.org/web/20160426013127webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/newton/, 26 April 2016, 25 April 2016, Indiana University, Bloomington, and summarised in a book.NEWS, Levitin, Dimitri, March 2019, Going for Gold, Literary Review,literaryreview.co.uk/going-for-gold-2, live, 6 March 2019,web.archive.org/web/20190307113828/https://literaryreview.co.uk/going-for-gold-2, 7 March 2019, BOOK, Newman, William R.,press.princeton.edu/titles/13261.html, Newton the Alchemist Science, Enigma, and the Quest for Nature’s “Secret Fire”, 2018, Princeton University Press, 978-0-691-17487-7, 6 March 2019,web.archive.org/web/20190402130607/https://press.princeton.edu/titles/13261.html, 2 April 2019, live, {{blockquote|Newton’s fundamental contributions to science include the quantification of gravitational attraction, the discovery that white light is actually a mixture of immutable spectral colors, and the formulation of the calculus. Yet there is another, more mysterious side to Newton that is imperfectly known, a realm of activity that spanned some thirty years of his life, although he kept it largely hidden from his contemporaries and colleagues. We refer to Newton’s involvement in the discipline of alchemy, or as it was often called in seventeenth-century England, “chymistry.“}}In June 2020, two unpublished pages of Newton’s notes on Jan Baptist van Helmont’s book on plague, De Peste,Van Helmont, Iohannis Baptistae, Opuscula Medica Inaudita: IV. De Peste, Editor Hieronymo Christian Paullo (Frankfurt am Main) Publisher Sumptibus Hieronimi Christiani Pauli, typis MatthiÃ¦ AndreÃ¦, 1707. were being auctioned online by Bonhams. Newton’s analysis of this book, which he made in Cambridge while protecting himself from London’s 1665â€“1666 infection, is the most substantial written statement he is known to have made about the plague, according to Bonhams. As far as the therapy is concerned, Newton writes that “the best is a toad suspended by the legs in a chimney for three days, which at last vomited up earth with various insects in it, on to a dish of yellow wax, and shortly after died. Combining powdered toad with the excretions and serum made into lozenges and worn about the affected area drove away the contagion and drew out the poison”.NEWS, Flood, Alison, 2 June 2020, Isaac Newton proposed curing plague with toad vomit, unseen papers show, The Guardian,www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jun/02/isaac-newton-plague-cure-toad-vomit, live, 6 June 2020,web.archive.org/web/20200606192933/https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jun/02/isaac-newton-plague-cure-toad-vomit, 6 June 2020,

Legacy

Fame

File:Tumba de Isaac Newton - panoramio (cropped).jpg|thumb|upright=1.2|Newton’s tomb monument in Westminster Abbey by John Michael Rysbrack John Michael RysbrackThe mathematician Joseph-Louis Lagrange said that Newton was the greatest genius who ever lived, and once added that Newton was also “the most fortunate, for we cannot find more than once a system of the world to establish.“Fred L. Wilson, History of Science: Newton citing: Delambre, M. “Notice sur la vie et les ouvrages de M. le comte J.L. Lagrange”, Oeuvres de Lagrange I. Paris, 1867, p. xx. English poet Alexander Pope wrote the famous epitaph:{{blockquote|Nature, and Nature’s laws lay hid in night.God said, Let Newton be! and all was light.}}But this was not allowed to be inscribed in Newton’s monument at Westminster. The epitaph added is as follows:WEB, Westminster Abbey, Sir Isaac Newton Scientist, Mathematician and Astronomer,www.westminster-abbey.org/ko/abbey-commemorations/commemorations/sir-isaac-newton, live,web.archive.org/web/20220809191135/https://www.westminster-abbey.org/ko/abbey-commemorations/commemorations/sir-isaac-newton, 9 August 2022, 19 January 2022, westminster-abbey.org, {{blockquote|}}which can be translated as follows:{{blockquote|Here is buried Isaac Newton, Knight, who by a strength of mind almost divine, and mathematical principles peculiarly his own, explored the course and figures of the planets, the paths of comets, the tides of the sea, the dissimilarities in rays of light, and, what no other scholar has previously imagined, the properties of the colours thus produced. Diligent, sagacious and faithful, in his expositions of nature, antiquity and the holy Scriptures, he vindicated by his philosophy the majesty of God mighty and good, and expressed the simplicity of the Gospel in his manners. Mortals rejoice that there has existed such and so great an ornament of the human race! He was born on 25th December 1642, and died on 20th March 1726.}}In a 2005 survey of members of Britain’s Royal Society (formerly headed by Newton) asking who had the greater effect on the history of science, Newton or Albert Einstein, the members deemed Newton to have made the greater overall contribution. In 1999, an opinion poll of 100 of the day’s leading physicists voted Einstein the “greatest physicist ever,” with Newton the runner-up, while a parallel survey of rank-and-file physicists by the site PhysicsWeb gave the top spot to Newton.NEWS, 29 November 1999, Opinion poll. Einstein voted ‘greatest physicist ever’ by leading physicists; Newton runner-up, BBC News,news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/541840.stm, live, 17 January 2012,news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/541840.stm," title="web.archive.org/web/20170812011359news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/541840.stm,">web.archive.org/web/20170812011359news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/541840.stm, 12 August 2017, WEB, 29 November 1999, Newton tops PhysicsWeb poll,physicsworld.com/a/newton-tops-physicsweb-poll/, 13 October 2023, Physics World, en-GB, 20 October 2023,web.archive.org/web/20231020122204/https://physicsworld.com/a/newton-tops-physicsweb-poll/, live, New Scientist called Newton “the supreme genius and most enigmatic character in the history of science”.WEB, Isaac Newton,www.newscientist.com/people/isaac-newton/, 28 September 2023, New Scientist, 28 September 2023,web.archive.org/web/20230928162212/https://www.newscientist.com/people/isaac-newton/, live, Einstein kept a picture of Newton on his study wall alongside ones of Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell.NEWS, Gleeson-White, Jane, 10 November 2003, Einstein’s Heroes, The Sydney Morning Herald,www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/einsteins-heroes-20031110-gdhr3v.html, live, 29 September 2021,web.archive.org/web/20191128115406/https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/einsteins-heroes-20031110-gdhr3v.html, 28 November 2019, Physicist Lev Landau ranked physicists on a logarithmic scale of productivity ranging from 0 to 5. The highest ranking, 0, was assigned to Newton. Albert Einstein was ranked 0.5. A rank of 1 was awarded to the “founding fathers” of quantum mechanics, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Paul Dirac and Erwin SchrÃ¶dinger. Landau, a Nobel prize winner and discoverer of superfluidity, ranked himself as 2.JOURNAL, Li, Jichao, Yin, Yian, Fortunato, Santo, Wang, Dashun, Nobel laureates are almost the same as us, Nature Reviews Physics, 18 April 2019, 1, 5, 301â€“303, 10.1038/s42254-019-0057-z, 2019NatRP...1..301L,par.nsf.gov/servlets/purl/10113092, 9 April 2024, The SI derived unit of force is named the newton in his honour.Woolsthorpe Manor is a Grade I listed building by Historic England through being his birthplace and “where he discovered gravity and developed his theories regarding the refraction of light”.{{NHLE|num=1062362|desc=Woolsthorpe Manor House, Colsterworth |access-date=5 October 2021}}In 1816, a tooth said to have belonged to Newton was sold for Â£730NEWS, 16 January 1881, Silly relic-worship, 10, The New York Times,www.nytimes.com/1881/01/16/archives/silly-relicworship-former-high-prices-for-personal-relics-of-great.html, live, 12 July 2009,web.archive.org/web/20190120194516/https://www.nytimes.com/1881/01/16/archives/silly-relicworship-former-high-prices-for-personal-relics-of-great.html, 20 January 2019, in London to an aristocrat who had it set in a ring.BOOK,www.amazon.com/dp/product-description/0553583786, Guinness World Records 2002, 2002, Bantam, 978-0-553-58378-6, Cunningham, Antonia, 12 July 2009,web.archive.org/web/20220809191132/https://www.amazon.com/dp/0553583786?ie=UTF8&*entries*=0&viewID=&*Version*=1, 9 August 2022, live, Guinness World Records 2002 classified it as the most valuable tooth in the world, which would value approximately Â£25,000 ({{US$}}35,700) in late 2001. Who bought it and who currently has it has not been disclosed.

Apple incident

{{Multiple image|direction=vertical|align=right|image1=Sapling of newton apple tree (cropped).jpg|image2=Newton’s tree, Botanic Gardens, Cambridge (sign).jpg|image3=Newtons apple.jpg|width=220|caption3=Reputed descendants of Newton’s apple tree at (from top to bottom): Trinity College, Cambridge, the Cambridge University Botanic Garden, and the Instituto Balseiro library garden in Argentina}}Newton himself often told the story that he was inspired to formulate his theory of gravitation by watching the fall of an apple from a tree.{{sfn|White|1997|p=86}}{{sfn|Numbers|2015|pp=48â€“56}} The story is believed to have passed into popular knowledge after being related by Catherine Barton, Newton’s niece, to Voltaire.BOOK, Malament, David B.,books.google.com/books?id=TqcMQy-Ioc4C&q=catherine+barton+apple&pg=PA118, Reading Natural Philosophy: Essays in the History and Philosophy of Science and Mathematics, 2002, Open Court Publishing, 978-0-8126-9507-6, 18 October 2020,web.archive.org/web/20210414055334/https://books.google.com/books?id=TqcMQy-Ioc4C&q=catherine+barton+apple&pg=PA118, 14 April 2021, live, Voltaire then wrote in his Essay on Epic Poetry (1727), “Sir Isaac Newton walking in his gardens, had the first thought of his system of gravitation, upon seeing an apple falling from a tree.“BOOK, Voltaire,books.google.com/books?id=0o5bAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA104, An Essay upon the Civil Wars of France, extracted from curious Manuscripts and also upon the Epick Poetry of the European Nations, from Homer down to Milton, 1727, Samuel Jallasson, London, England, 104, 14 June 2021,web.archive.org/web/20210614182518/https://books.google.com/books?id=0o5bAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA104, 14 June 2021, live, From p. 104: ‘In the like Manner Pythagoras ow’d the Invention of Musik to the noise of the Hammer of a Blacksmith. And thus in our Days Sir Isaak Newton walking in his Garden had the first Thought of his System of Gravitation, upon seeing an apple falling from a Tree.’Voltaire (1786) heard the story of Newton and the apple tree from Newton’s niece, Catherine Conduit (nÃ©e Barton) (1679â€“1740): BOOK, Voltaire,books.google.com/books?id=NKWTGHiZSm4C&pg=PA175, Oeuvres completes de Voltaire, 1786, Jean-Jacques Tourneisen, 31, Basel, Switzerland, 175, French, The complete works of Voltaire, 15 June 2021,web.archive.org/web/20210709192112/https://books.google.com/books?id=NKWTGHiZSm4C&pg=PA175, 9 July 2021, live, From p. 175: “Un jour en l’annÃ©e 1666, Newton retirÃ© Ã la campagne, et voyant tomber des fruits d’un arbre, Ã ce que m’a contÃ© sa niÃ¨ce, (Mme Conduit) se laissa aller Ã une mÃ©ditation profonde sur la cause qui entraine ainsi tous les corps dans une ligne, qui, si elle Ã©tait prolongÃ©e, passerait Ã peu prÃ¨s par le centre de la terre.” (One day in the year 1666 Newton withdrew to the country, and seeing the fruits of a tree fall, according to what his niece (Madame Conduit) told me, he entered into a deep meditation on the cause that draws all bodies in a [straight] line, which, if it were extended, would pass very near to the center of the Earth.)Although it has been said that the apple story is a myth and that he did not arrive at his theory of gravity at any single moment, acquaintances of Newton (such as William Stukeley, whose manuscript account of 1752 has been made available by the Royal Society) do in fact confirm the incident, though not the apocryphal version that the apple actually hit Newton’s head. Stukeley recorded in his Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton’s Life a conversation with Newton in Kensington on 15 April 1726:WEB, Revised Memoir of Newton (Normalized Version),www.newtonproject.ox.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/OTHE00001, live,www.newtonproject.ox.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/OTHE00001," title="web.archive.org/web/20170314064817www.newtonproject.ox.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/OTHE00001,">web.archive.org/web/20170314064817www.newtonproject.ox.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/OTHE00001, 14 March 2017, 13 March 2017, The Newton Project, {{Blockquote|we went into the garden, & drank thea under the shade of some appletrees, only he, & myself. amidst other discourse, he told me, he was just in the same situation, as when formerly, the notion of gravitation came into his mind. “why should that apple always descend perpendicularly to the ground,” thought he to him self: occasion’d by the fall of an apple, as he sat in a comtemplative mood: “why should it not go sideways, or upwards? but constantly to the earths centre? assuredly, the reason is, that the earth draws it. there must be a drawing power in matter. & the sum of the drawing power in the matter of the earth must be in the earths center, not in any side of the earth. therefore dos this apple fall perpendicularly, or toward the center. if matter thus draws matter; it must be in proportion of its quantity. therefore the apple draws the earth, as well as the earth draws the apple.“}}John Conduitt, Newton’s assistant at the Royal Mint and husband of Newton’s niece, also described the event when he wrote about Newton’s life:{{Blockquote|In the year 1666 he retired again from Cambridge to his mother in Lincolnshire. Whilst he was pensively meandering in a garden it came into his thought that the power of gravity (which brought an apple from a tree to the ground) was not limited to a certain distance from earth, but that this power must extend much further than was usually thought. Why not as high as the Moon said he to himself & if so, that must influence her motion & perhaps retain her in her orbit, whereupon he fell a calculating what would be the effect of that supposition.}}File:Doctor Zirkel follows Newton’s famous steps under the fabled Wellcome V0011942.jpg|alt=wood engraving of newton under the apple tree|thumb|upright=0.75|A wood engraving wood engravingIt is known from his notebooks that Newton was grappling in the late 1660s with the idea that terrestrial gravity extends, in an inverse-square proportion, to the Moon; however, it took him two decades to develop the full-fledged theory.I. Bernard Cohen and George E. Smith, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Newton (2002) p. 6 The question was not whether gravity existed, but whether it extended so far from Earth that it could also be the force holding the Moon to its orbit. Newton showed that if the force decreased as the inverse square of the distance, one could indeed calculate the Moon’s orbital period, and get good agreement. He guessed the same force was responsible for other orbital motions, and hence named it “universal gravitation”.Various trees are claimed to be “the” apple tree which Newton describes. The King’s School, Grantham claims that the tree was purchased by the school, uprooted and transported to the headmaster’s garden some years later. The staff of the (now) National Trust-owned Woolsthorpe Manor dispute this, and claim that a tree present in their gardens is the one described by Newton. A descendant of the original treeAlberto A. Martinez Science Secrets: The Truth about Darwin’s Finches, Einstein’s Wife, and Other Myths, p. 69 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011); {{isbn|978-0-8229-4407-2}} can be seen growing outside the main gate of Trinity College, Cambridge, below the room Newton lived in when he studied there. The National Fruit Collection at Brogdale in Kent can supply grafts from their tree, which appears identical to Flower of Kent, a coarse-fleshed cooking variety.

Commemorations

File:Isaac Newton statue.jpg|thumb|upright|Newton statue on display at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History Oxford University Museum of Natural HistoryNewton’s monument (1731) can be seen in Westminster Abbey, at the north of the entrance to the choir against the choir screen, near his tomb. It was executed by the sculptor Michael Rysbrack (1694â€“1770) in white and grey marble with design by the architect William Kent.’The Abbey Scientists’ Hall, A.R. p13: London; Roger & Robert Nicholson; 1966 The monument features a figure of Newton reclining on top of a sarcophagus, his right elbow resting on several of his great books and his left hand pointing to a scroll with a mathematical design. Above him is a pyramid and a celestial globe showing the signs of the Zodiac and the path of the comet of 1680. A relief panel depicts putti using instruments such as a telescope and prism. From 1978 until 1988, an image of Newton designed by Harry Ecclestone appeared on Series D Â£1 banknotes issued by the Bank of England (the last Â£1 notes to be issued by the Bank of England). Newton was shown on the reverse of the notes holding a book and accompanied by a telescope, a prism and a map of the Solar System.A statue of Isaac Newton, looking at an apple at his feet, can be seen at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. A large bronze statue, Newton, after William Blake, by Eduardo Paolozzi, dated 1995 and inspired by Blake’s etching, dominates the piazza of the British Library in London. A bronze statue of Newton was erected in 1858 in the centre of Grantham where he went to school, prominently standing in front of Grantham Guildhall.The still-surviving farmhouse at Woolsthorpe By Colsterworth is a Grade I listed building by Historic England through being his birthplace and “where he discovered gravity and developed his theories regarding the refraction of light”.{{clear left}}

The Enlightenment

Enlightenment philosophers chose a short history of scientific predecessorsâ€”Galileo, Boyle, and Newton principallyâ€”as the guides and guarantors of their applications of the singular concept of nature and natural law to every physical and social field of the day. In this respect, the lessons of history and the social structures built upon it could be discarded.Cassels, Alan. Ideology and International Relations in the Modern World. p. 2.It is held by European philosophers of the Enlightenment and by historians of the Enlightenment that Newton’s publication of the Principia was a turning point in the Scientific Revolution and started the Enlightenment. It was Newton’s conception of the universe based upon natural and rationally understandable laws that became one of the seeds for Enlightenment ideology.“Although it was just one of the many factors in the Enlightenment, the success of Newtonian physics in providing a mathematical description of an ordered world clearly played a big part in the flowering of this movement in the eighteenth century” by John Gribbin, Science: A History 1543â€“2001 (2002), p. 241 {{ISBN|978-0-7139-9503-9}} Locke and Voltaire applied concepts of natural law to political systems advocating intrinsic rights; the physiocrats and Adam Smith applied natural conceptions of psychology and self-interest to economic systems; and sociologists criticised the current social order for trying to fit history into natural models of progress. Monboddo and Samuel Clarke resisted elements of Newton’s work, but eventually rationalised it to conform with their strong religious views of nature.

Works

Published in his lifetime

De analysi per aequationes numero terminorum infinitas (1669, published 1711)Anders Hald 2003 â€“ A history of probability and statistics and their applications before 1750 â€“ 586 pages Volume 501 of Wiley series in probability and statistics Wiley-IEEE, 2003 {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220602024647books.google.com/books?id=pOQy6-qnVx8C&pg=PA563&q=de%20analysi%20per%20aequationes%20numero%20terminorum%20infinitas |date=2 June 2022 }} Retrieved 27 January 2012 {{ISBN|0-471-47129-1}}
Of Natures Obvious Laws & Processes in Vegetation (unpublished, {{circa|1671}}â€“75)WEB, Natures obvious laws & processes in vegetation â€“ Introduction,webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/newton/mss/intro/ALCH00081/query/field1=text&text1=Of%20Natures%20obvious%20laws%20&%20processes%20in%20vegetation, live,webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/newton/mss/intro/ALCH00081/query/," title="web.archive.org/web/20210117172142webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/newton/mss/intro/ALCH00081/query/,">web.archive.org/web/20210117172142webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/newton/mss/intro/ALCH00081/query/, 17 January 2021, 17 January 2021, The Chymistry of Isaac Newton, Transcribed and online at Indiana University.
De motu corporum in gyrum (1684)Whiteside, D.T., ed. (1974). Mathematical Papers of Isaac Newton, 1684â€“1691. 6. Cambridge University Press. pp. 30â€“91. {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160610163025books.google.com/books?id=lIZ0v23iqRgC&pg=PA30 |date=10 June 2016 }}
PhilosophiÃ¦ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687)WEB, Museum of London exhibit including facsimile of title page from John Flamsteed’s copy of 1687 edition of Newton’s Principia,www.museumoflondon.org.uk/archive/exhibits/pepys/pages/largeImage.asp?id=101&size=3&nav=none, dead,www.museumoflondon.org.uk/archive/exhibits/pepys/pages/largeImage.asp?id=101&size=3&nav=none," title="web.archive.org/web/20120331192529www.museumoflondon.org.uk/archive/exhibits/pepys/pages/largeImage.asp?id=101&size=3&nav=none,">web.archive.org/web/20120331192529www.museumoflondon.org.uk/archive/exhibits/pepys/pages/largeImage.asp?id=101&size=3&nav=none, 31 March 2012, 16 March 2012, Museumoflondon.org.uk,
Scala graduum Caloris. Calorum Descriptiones & signa (1701)Published anonymously as “Scala graduum Caloris. Calorum Descriptiones & signa.” in Philosophical Transactions, 1701, 824 {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200121085937books.google.com/books?id=x8NeAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA824 |date=21 January 2020 }}â€“829;

ed. Joannes Nichols, Isaaci Newtoni Opera quae exstant omnia, vol. 4 (1782), 403 {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160617115723books.google.com/books?id=Dz2FzJqaJMUC&pg=PA403 |date=17 June 2016 }}â€“407.Mark P. Silverman, A Universe of Atoms, An Atom in the Universe, Springer, 2002, p. 49. {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160624011536books.google.com/books?id=-Er5pIsYe_AC&pg=PA49 |date=24 June 2016 }}

Opticks (1704)BOOK, Newton, Isaac,gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k3362k, Opticks or, a Treatise of the reflexions, refractions, inflexions and colours of light. Also two treatises of the species and magnitude of curvilinear figures, Sam. Smith. and Benj. Walford, 1704, 17 March 2018,gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k3362k," title="web.archive.org/web/20210224021530gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k3362k,">web.archive.org/web/20210224021530gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k3362k, 24 February 2021, live,
Reports as Master of the Mint (1701â€“1725)BOOK, Pickover, Clifford,books.google.com/books?id=SQXcpvjcJBUC&pg=PAPA117, Archimedes to Hawking: Laws of Science and the Great Minds Behind Them, 2008, Oxford University Press, 978-0-19-979268-9, 117â€“18, 17 March 2018, 26 February 2024,web.archive.org/web/20240226145626/https://books.google.com/books?id=SQXcpvjcJBUC&pg=PAPA117v=onepage&q&f=false, live,
Arithmetica Universalis (1707)

Published posthumously

De mundi systemate (The System of the World) (1728)
Optical Lectures (1728)
The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended (1728)
Observations on Daniel and The Apocalypse of St. John (1733)
Method of Fluxions (1671, published 1736)MAGAZINE, Swetz, Frank J., Mathematical Treasure: Newton’s Method of Fluxions,www.maa.org/press/periodicals/convergence/mathematical-treasure-newtons-method-of-fluxions, live, Convergence, Mathematical Association of America,www.maa.org/press/periodicals/convergence/mathematical-treasure-newtons-method-of-fluxions," title="web.archive.org/web/20170628213844www.maa.org/press/periodicals/convergence/mathematical-treasure-newtons-method-of-fluxions,">web.archive.org/web/20170628213844www.maa.org/press/periodicals/convergence/mathematical-treasure-newtons-method-of-fluxions, 28 June 2017, 17 March 2018,
An Historical Account of Two Notable Corruptions of Scripture (1754)

References

Notes

Citations

Retrieved 5 July 2022.BOOK, Hamblyn, Richard, 2011, The Art of Science, Pan Macmillan, 978-1-4472-0415-2,books.google.com/books?id=1xKFSqsDj0MC&pg=PAPT57, Newtonian Apples: William Stukeley, 1 December 2018, 9 March 2020,web.archive.org/web/20200309013441/https://books.google.com/books?id=1xKFSqsDj0MC&pg=PAPT57, live, WEB,www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/THEM00167, Conduitt, John, Keynes Ms. 130.4:Conduitt’s account of Newton’s life at Cambridge, Newtonproject, Imperial College London, 30 August 2006, 7 November 2009,www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/THEM00167," title="web.archive.org/web/20091107101632www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/THEM00167,">web.archive.org/web/20091107101632www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/THEM00167, live, BOOK, Westfall, Richard S., 1980, 1983, Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 978-0-521-27435-7, 530â€“31,archive.org/details/neveratrestbiogr00west/page/530, JOURNAL, Dobbs, J. T., December 1982, Newton’s Alchemy and His Theory of Matter, Isis, 73, 4, 523, 10.1086/353114, 170669199, quoting OpticksJOURNAL, New Scientist,www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2010/01/newtons-apple-the-real-story.php,www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2010/01/newtons-apple-the-real-story.php," title="archive.today/20100121073908www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2010/01/newtons-apple-the-real-story.php,">archive.today/20100121073908www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2010/01/newtons-apple-the-real-story.php, dead, 21 January 2010, Newton’s apple: The real story, 18 January 2010, 10 May 2010, WEB,scienceworld.wolfram.com/biography/Newton.html, Newton, Isaac (1642â€“1727), Eric Weisstein’s World of Biography, 30 August 2006, Eric W. Weisstein, 28 April 2006,scienceworld.wolfram.com/biography/Newton.html," title="web.archive.org/web/20060428081045scienceworld.wolfram.com/biography/Newton.html,">web.archive.org/web/20060428081045scienceworld.wolfram.com/biography/Newton.html, live, JOURNAL, Duarte, F. J., F. J. Duarte, 2000, Newton, prisms, and the ‘opticks’ of tunable lasers, Optics and Photonics News, 11, 5, 24â€“25, 10.1364/OPN.11.5.000024, 2000OptPN..11...24D,www.tunablelasers.com/F.J.DuarteOPN%282000%29.pdf, 17 February 2015, 17 February 2015,www.tunablelasers.com/F.J.DuarteOPN%282000%29.pdf," title="web.archive.org/web/20150217223512www.tunablelasers.com/F.J.DuarteOPN%282000%29.pdf,">web.archive.org/web/20150217223512www.tunablelasers.com/F.J.DuarteOPN%282000%29.pdf, live, BOOK, Westfall, Richard S., 1958, Science and Religion in Seventeenth-Century England, Yale University Press, New Haven, 200, 978-0-208-00843-5, BOOK, Keynes, John Maynard, 1972, Newton, The Man, The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes Volume X, MacMillan St. Martin’s Press, 363â€“66, WEB,etoile.berkeley.edu/~jrg/TelescopeHistory/Early_Period.html, The Early Period (1608â€“1672), 3 February 2009, James R. Graham’s Home Page, {{dead link|date=June 2017 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}BOOK, Jacob, Margaret C., 1976, The Newtonians and the English Revolution: 1689â€“1720,archive.org/details/newtoniansenglis00jaco, registration, Cornell University Press, 37, 44, 978-0-85527-066-7, {{harvnb|White|1997|p=170}}WEB,www.bankofengland.co.uk/banknotes/denom_guide/nonflash/1-SeriesD-Revised.htm, Withdrawn banknotes reference guide, Bank of England, 27 August 2009, dead,www.bankofengland.co.uk/banknotes/denom_guide/nonflash/1-SeriesD-Revised.htm," title="web.archive.org/web/20100505053927www.bankofengland.co.uk/banknotes/denom_guide/nonflash/1-SeriesD-Revised.htm,">web.archive.org/web/20100505053927www.bankofengland.co.uk/banknotes/denom_guide/nonflash/1-SeriesD-Revised.htm, 5 May 2010, BOOK, {{Google books, 7R8LsvMcUioC, yes, |title=Isaac Newton: adventurer in thought |page=67 |isbn=978-0-521-56669-8 |last=Hall |first=Alfred Rupert |author-link=Alfred Rupert Hall |date=1996 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |oclc=606137087 |quote=This is the one dated 23 February 1669, in which Newton described his first reflecting telescope, constructed (it seems) near the close of the previous year. }}See ‘Correspondence of Isaac Newton, vol. 2, 1676â€“1687’ ed. H.W. Turnbull, Cambridge University Press 1960; at p. 297, document No. 235, letter from Hooke to Newton dated 24 November 1679.WEB, Newton beats Einstein in polls of Royal Society scientists and the public, The Royal Society,royalsociety.org/News.aspx?id=1324&terms=Newton+beats+Einstein+in+polls+of+scientists+and+the+public, 24 August 2010, 13 July 2017,web.archive.org/web/20170713073814/https://royalsociety.org/News.aspx?id=1324&terms=Newton+beats+Einstein+in+polls+of+scientists+and+the+public, live, WEB,www.westminster-abbey.org/our-history/people/sir-isaac-newton, Famous People & the Abbey: Sir Isaac Newton, Westminster Abbey, 13 November 2009, 16 October 2009,www.westminster-abbey.org/our-history/people/sir-isaac-newton," title="web.archive.org/web/20091016081238www.westminster-abbey.org/our-history/people/sir-isaac-newton,">web.archive.org/web/20091016081238www.westminster-abbey.org/our-history/people/sir-isaac-newton, live, Whittaker, E.T., A History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity, Dublin University Press, 1910.}}

Bibliography

BOOK, Ball, W. W. Rouse, A Short Account of the History of Mathematics, New York, Dover, 1908, 978-0-486-20630-1, registration,archive.org/details/shortaccountofhi0000ball,
BOOK, Gjertsen, Derek, The Newton Handbook, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1986, 0-7102-0279-2,
BOOK, Katz, David S., Kushner, Tony, The Marginalization of Early Modern Jewish History, 1992, Frank Cass, 0-7146-3464-6, 42â€“59, Englishness and Medieval Anglo-Jewry,
BOOK, Levenson, Thomas, Newton and the Counterfeiter: The Unknown Detective Career of the World’s Greatest Scientist, Mariner Books, 2010, 978-0-547-33604-6,
BOOK, Manuel, Frank E., A Portrait of Isaac Newton,archive.org/details/portraitofisaacn00manu, registration, 1968, Belknap Press of Harvard University, Cambridge, MA,
BOOK, Numbers, R. L., 2015, Newton’s Apple and Other Myths about Science,books.google.com/books?id=pWouCwAAQBAJ, Harvard University Press, 978-0-674-91547-3, 7 December 2018, 8 July 2023,web.archive.org/web/20230708151321/https://books.google.com/books?id=pWouCwAAQBAJ, live,
BOOK, Stewart, James, Calculus: Concepts and Contexts, Cengage Learning, 2009, 978-0-495-55742-5,
BOOK, Richard S. Westfall, Westfall, Richard S., Never at Rest, Cambridge University Press, 1980, 978-0-521-27435-7,archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%28westfall%29%20newton,
BOOK, Westfall, Richard S., Isaac Newton, Cambridge University Press, 2007, 978-0-19-921355-9,
BOOK, Westfall, Richard S., The Life of Isaac Newton, Cambridge University Press, 1994, 978-0-521-47737-6,archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%28westfall%29%20newton,
BOOK, Michael White (author), Isaac Newton: The Last Sorcerer, Michael, White, Fourth Estate Limited, 1997, 978-1-85702-416-6,

External links

Enlightening Science digital project: Texts of his papers, “Popularisations” and podcasts at the Newton Project
{{UK National Archives ID}}
{{NPG name|name=Sir Isaac Newton}}

Writings by Newton

Newton’s works â€“ full texts, at the Newton Project
Newton’s papers in the Royal Society’s archives
The Newton Manuscripts at the National Library of Israel â€“ the collection of all his religious writings
{{Gutenberg author |id=6288| name=Isaac Newton}}
{{Internet Archive author |sname=Isaac Newton}}
{{Librivox author |id=2836}}
“Newton Papers” â€“ Cambridge Digital Library

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Early life

The King’s School

University of Cambridge

Mid-life

Calculus

Optics

Gravity

Later life

Royal Mint

Knighthood

Death

Personality

Theology

Religious views

Religious thought

Alchemy

Legacy

Fame

Apple incident

Commemorations

The Enlightenment

Works

Published in his lifetime

Published posthumously

See also

References

Notes

Citations

Bibliography

Further reading

Primary

Alchemy

Religion

Science

External links

Writings by Newton