365 Days of Facts

Sir Isaac Newton was realistic in his summation of how much we understand the universe, but thanks to his scientific contributions, that drop multiplied. 

Newton was born prematurely in England on January 4, 1643.  Newton’s father died before he was born, and he was raised largely by his maternal grandmother because he disliked his stepfather.

He attended Cambridge until the Great Plague in 1665, when he was forced to move back home.  Like few others living through times of quarantine and pandemic, Newton made excellent use of this time and the years that followed by working extensively on his theories of calculus, color, light, motion, and the law of gravity.

Isaac Newton: “No great discovery was ever made without a bold guess.”

We have Sir Isaac Newton to thank for documenting the scientific method of testing a hypothesis to reach a conclusion. 

He was a scholar, writer, and inventor whose work forms the foundation of much of what we know today. Newton was highly respected and decorated for his work, but it was not without controversy. He disliked when others questioned or criticized his work.

As an example, his experimentation with refraction of light led to a series of angry letters with Robert Hooke.  Newton grew angry defending his work and had a breakdown that caused him to withdraw from society in 1678. 

Newton continued to work privately on various theories, including the elliptical movement of celestial bodies.  Astronomer Edmund Halley learned of his work in the 1680s and encouraged him to publish again, resulting in the law of universal gravitation, the three laws of motion and his theory of calculus.

His influential work “Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica” in 1687 laid out that (1) Every object in a state of uniform motion will remain in that state of motion unless an external force acts on it; (2) Force equals mass times acceleration; and (3) For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

There is debate about the legitimacy of the story of the apple falling from the tree as the driver for Newton’s law of gravity.  His notes show that he was interested in gravity for decades, so it was not one single instance that revealed the law gravity to him.  He was particularly interested in how far gravity extends, and whether it was holding the Moon, and by extension other celestial bodies, in orbit.

Newton’s contributions to society were not limited to pure science and math. He also helped Britain restore its financial standing. There was a problem with forged currency.  He reset the standard from silver to gold and worked to prosecute counterfeiters. 

He was appointed as Master of the Mint in 1700 and stayed in this role until his death. Respected as the greatest scientific mind of the time, in 1705 he was knighted by Queen Anne of England.

He never married and spent his later years living with a niece. He died in his sleep on March 31, 1727, and he was buried in Westminster Abbey.