Isaac Newton is best known for having invented the calculus in the mid to late 1660s and

for having formulated the theory of universal gravity — the latter in his Principia, the single
most important work in the transformation of early modern natural philosophy into
modern physical science. Yet he also made major discoveries in optics beginning in the mid-
1660s and reaching across four decades; and during the course of his 60 years of intense
intellectual activity he put no less effort into chemical and alchemical research and into
theology and biblical studies than he put into mathematics and physics. He became a
dominant figure in Britain almost immediately following publication of his Principia in 1687,
with the consequence that “Newtonianism” of one form or another had become firmly
rooted there within the first decade of the eighteenth century. His influence on the
continent, however, was delayed by the strong opposition to his theory of gravity expressed
by such leading figures as Christiaan Huygens and Leibniz, both of whom saw the theory as
invoking an occult power of action at a distance in the absence of Newton's having
proposed a contact mechanism by means of which forces of gravity could act. As the
promise of the theory of gravity became increasingly substantiated, starting in the late
1730s but especially during the 1740s and 1750s, Newton became an equally dominant
figure on the continent, and “Newtonianism,” though perhaps in more guarded forms,
flourished there as well. What physics textbooks now refer to as “Newtonian mechanics”
and “Newtonian science” consists mostly of results achieved on the continent between
1740 and 1800.
Albert Einstein was bornin the German Empire, on 14 March 1879 Einstein excelled at math and
physics from a young age, reaching a mathematical level years ahead of his peers. The 12-year-old
Einstein taught himself algebra and Euclidean geometry over a single summer. [27] Einstein also
independently discovered his own original proof of the Pythagorean theorem aged 12.[28] A family
tutor Max Talmud says that after he had given the 12-year-old Einstein a geometry textbook, after a
short time "[Einstein] had worked through the whole book. He thereupon devoted himself to higher
mathematics... Soon the flight of his mathematical genius was so high I could not follow." [29] His
passion for geometry and algebra led the 12-year-old to become convinced that nature could be
understood as a "mathematical structure". [29] Einstein started teaching himself calculus at 12, and as
a 14-year-old he says he had "mastered integral and differential calculus".[30]