- By Renil Joseph

Isaac Newton
1643-1727
 Who was Isaac Newton?
 Isaac Newton was an English mathematician, astronomer,
and physicist (described in his own day as a "natural
philosopher") who is widely recognised as one of the most
influential scientists of all time and a key figure in
the scientific revolution.
 In 1687, he published his most acclaimed
work, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica
(Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy), which
has been called the single most influential book on
physics.
 In 1705, he was knighted by Queen Anne of England,
making him Sir Isaac Newton.
 He is referred to as ‘The father of Modern Science and
Mathematics’.
 He is considered to be the greatest and the most influential
scientists ever lived.
 He was neither married nor had children.
 He never did good in school.
 He failed miserably when he was put in charge of the
family farm.
When was Isaac Newton born?
Isaac Newton was born on January 4, 1643, in Woolsthorpe,
Lincolnshire, England. Using the "old" Julien calendar,
Newton's birth date is sometimes displayed as December 25,
1642.
Childhood
 Newton’s 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.
 When Newton was three, his mother remarried and went
to live with her new husband, the Reverend Barnabas
Smith and had three children, leaving her son in the care
of his maternal grandmother, Margery Ayscough.
 From the age of about twelve until he was seventeen,
Newton was educated at The King's School, Grantham,
which taught Latin and Greek and probably imparted a
significant foundation of mathematics.
 He was removed from school, and by October 1659, he
was to be found at Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth, where
his mother, widowed for a second time, attempted to make
a farmer of him. Newton hated farming.
 Henry Stokes, master at the King's School, persuaded his
mother to send him back to school so that he might
complete his education.
 Motivated partly by a desire for revenge against a
schoolyard bully, he became the top-ranked
student, distinguishing himself mainly by
building sundials and models of windmills.
 In June 1661, he was admitted to Trinity College,
Cambridge, on the recommendation of his uncle Rev
William Ayscough, who had studied there.
 His studies had impressed the Lucasian professor Isaac
Barrow, who was more anxious to develop his own
religious and administrative potential (he became master
of Trinity two years later); in 1669 Newton succeeded
him, only one year after receiving his MA.
 He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in
1672.
Inventions
The water clock by Isaac Newton for his grandmother to know the
time in shade.
 Newton’s sundial which worked with the help of sunlight for his
grandmother to know the time.
The windmill by Isaac Newton which could grind wheat and
grain.
 The reflecting telescope is designed with a paraboloid mirror at
the base which reflects the incoming light onto a slanted flat
secondary mirror. This flat mirror ultimately reflects the
collected light to an eyepiece for observation.
 The Perfect Coin
 Working as Warden at the Royal Mint, Newton recalled all
English coins and had them melted down and remade into a
higher-quality, harder-to-counterfeit design. It was a bold move,
considering that the entire country had to make do without a
currency for an entire year. You know those ridges on the edge of
a U.S. quarter? Those are milled edges, a feature introduced by
Newton on English coins to prevent clipping.
 The invention of the pet door, now a common feature in many
American or European homes is often attributed to Newton, who
supposedly came up with the idea, to allow his pet cats to travel
in and out without disturbing him.
Discoveries
 In 1687, the sum total of his discoveries in mechanics were published
in the legendary book Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica
(Latin for Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy).
 In this book, (fondly referred to as the Principia by scientists), he
synthesized what was known, into a logically whole and consistent
theoretical framework, through his laws of motion and theory of
gravitation.
 The Laws of Motion
 First Law of Motion: An object will continue moving (or
staying still) unless acted upon by an external force
 Second Law of Motion: Force = Mass x Acceleration
 Third Law of Motion: When one body exerts a force on a
second body, the second body simultaneously exerts a force equal
in magnitude and opposite in direction to that of the first body.
 Newton’s law of gravitation defines the universal force of
gravity, whose implications can be studied in the mechanical
framework that he created through the laws of motion. The
Newton’s law of universal gravitation states that:
 Every particle of matter attracts every other particle with a force
along the straight line joining them and is directly proportional
to their masses, while inversely proportional to the square of the
distance between them.
 Inquiry into the nature of light – Optics
 Newton was fascinated with the field of optics and not
surprisingly, made some major discoveries. His prime focus
was unravelling the nature of light and its properties. Using
prisms and lenses, he studied the refraction and diffraction
of light. The description of these experiments and his
discoveries detailing light associated phenomena were
published in 1706, through the book – Optics. What the
principia did for mechanics, this book did for the field of
optics, fundamentally revolutionizing it. Newton showed
white light to be made of component colours.
 Newton’s Law of Cooling
 Among his other stellar discoveries, Newton also came up with
an empirical theory explaining the rate at which your hot cup of
coffee cools. The law discovered by him states that the rate of
cooling in a body is directly proportional to temperature
difference between the body and its surroundings.
 Binomial Theorem
 Under the tutelage of Isaac Barrow at Cambridge, Newton’s
mathematical genius flowered. His first original contribution to
mathematics was the advancement of binomial theorem. Through
the usage of algebra of finite quantities in an infinite series, he
included negative and fractional exponents in the binomial
theorem.
 Calculus
 Isolated during the plague years (1665-1666) at Woolsthorpe
Manor, Newton came up with his greatest breakthroughs in
physics and mathematics. Through invention of Infinitesimal
Calculus, (credit for which also belongs to Leibniz), Newton
provided a mathematical framework which enabled the study of
continuous changes. He called it the Science of Fluxions. The
invention of calculus ranks right up there with invention of fire or
the building of the first steam engine. His approach to calculus
was geometrical, in contrast to Leibniz, who was inclined more
towards the analytical side.
 Newton-Raphson Method
 He also made contributions to numerical analysis in the form of
the Newton-Raphson method. In the book, De analysi per
aequationes numero terminorum infinitas (Latin for On analysis
by infinite series), published in 1771, Newton described this
iterative method of approximation to calculate roots of real-
valued functions.
 Thank You

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