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Sean Cox
FIELDS OF STUDY
Physicist, Mathematician, Astronomer,
Natural philosopher,
Alchemist Theologian, He has been considered by many to be the greatest and most influential scientist
EARLY LIFE
Born in the manor house of Woolsthorpe, near Grantham in Lincolnshire. Born January 4, 1643 He had a passion for learning. Newton entered his uncle's old College, Trinity College Cambridge, on 5 June 1661.
Newton's aim at Cambridge was a law degree. Newton studied the philosophy of Descartes, Gassendi, Hobbes, and in particular Boyle. The mechanics of the Copernican astronomy of Galileo attracted him and he also studied Kepler's Optics. He recorded his thoughts in a book which he titles Quaestiones Quaedam Philosophicae (Certain Philosophical Questions)
GRADUATION
Newton was elected a scholar on 28 April 1664 and received his bachelor's degree in April 1665
MATHEMATICS
Newton made contributions to all branches of mathematics then studied, but is especially famous for his solutions to the modern problems in analytical geometry of drawing tangents to curves and defining areas bounded by curves. Not only did Newton discover that these problems were inverse to each other, but he discovered general methods of resolving problems of curvature, embraced in his "method of fluxions" and "inverse method of fluxions. Newton used the term "fluxion" (from Latin meaning "flow")because he imagined a quantity "flowing" from Newton's work on pure mathematics was hidden from all but his journalists until 1704, when he published, His Cambridge lectures, delivered from about 1673 to 1683, were published in 1707. one magnitude to another. with Opticks, about the quadrature of curves and another on the classification of the cubic curves.
moves toward the ground. Thus, by Newton's 2nd Law there must be a force that
acts on the apple to cause this acceleration. Let's call this force "gravity", and the associated acceleration the "acceleration due to gravity". Then imagine the apple tree is twice as high. Again, we expect the apple to be accelerated toward the ground, so this suggests that this force that we call gravity reaches to the top of the tallest apple tree.
By such reasoning, Newton came to the conclusion that any two objects in the Universe use gravitational attraction on each other, with the force having a universal form: called the Law of Universal Gravitation.
OPTICS
Newton's first work as Professor was on optics. Every scientist since Aristotle had believed light to be a simple object, but Newton, through his experience when building telescopes, believed otherwise: it is often found that the observed images have colored rings around them. His crucial experiment showing that white light is composite consisted in taking beam of white light and passing it through a prism; the result is a wide
Beam of white light passing it through a prism resulting in a wide beam displaying a spectrum of colors. If the wide beam is made to pass through a second prism, the output is again a narrow beam of white light.
But, if only one color is allowed to pass (using a screen), the beam after the second prism has this one color again.
RELIGIOUS VIEWS
Newton was a monotheist who believed in biblical prophecies but was Antitrinitarian (doesnt believe in the Trinity). In Newton's eyes, worshipping Christ as God was idolization.
INFLUENCES
Henry More- an English philosopher Polish Brethren- members of the Minor Reformed Church of Poland. They were Nontrinitarian (Antitrinitarian) just like Newton. Robert Boyle- natural philosopher, chemist, physicist, and inventor, also noted for his writings in theology.
DEATH
Died March 20, 1727 at the age of 84 in Kensington, England.
SOURCES
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton http://physics.ucr.edu/~wudka/Physics7/Notes_www/node58.ht ml http://physics.ucr.edu/~wudka/Physics7/Notes_www/node59.ht ml http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Biographies/Newton.htm