Isaac Newton

Isaac Newton, in full Sir Isaac Newton, (born December 25, 1642
[January 4, 1643, New Style], Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England—died
March 20 [March 31], 1727, London), English physicist and
mathematician, who was the culminating figure of the Scientific
Revolution of the 17th century. In optics, his discovery of
the composition of white light integrated the phenomena of colours into
the science of light and laid the foundation for modern physical optics.
In mechanics, his three laws of motion, the basic principles of
modern physics, resulted in the formulation of the law of universal
gravitation. In mathematics, he was the original discoverer of the
infinitesimal calculus. Newton’s Philosophiae Naturalis Principia
Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, 1687) was
one of the most important single works in the history of modern science.

Isaac newton (1642-1727)

Influence of the Scientific Revolution: When Newton arrived

in Cambridge in 1661, the movement now known as the Scientific
Revolution was well advanced, and many of the works basic to modern
science had appeared. Astronomers from Nicolaus
Copernicus to Johannes Kepler had elaborated the heliocentric system of
the universe. Galileo had proposed the foundations of a
new mechanics built on the principle of inertia. Led by René Descartes,
philosophers had begun to formulate a new conception of nature as an
intricate, impersonal, and inert machine. Yet as far as the universities of
Europe, including Cambridge, were concerned, all this might well have
 never happened. They continued to be the strongholds of
outmoded Aristotelianism, which rested on a geocentric view of the
universe and dealt with nature in qualitative rather than quantitative
terms.