I would like to lead you the journey about the life of Sir Isaac Newton.
On Jan 4, 1643 Isaac Newton was born in the hamlet of Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England. He was the only son of a prosperous local farmer who died three months before he was born. A premature baby born tiny and weak, Newton was not expected to survive. When he was 3years old his mother Hannah remarried well-to-do minister, Barnabas Smith, leaving young Newton with his maternal grandmother. As we can imagine this experience left an indelible imprint on Newton an acute sense of insecurity, at age 12, Newton was united with his mother after her second husband died. Newton was enrolled at the King’s School in Grantham, a town in Lincolnshire. His mother’s plan was to make him a farmer but Newton found it monotonous. It wasn’t until his uncle persuaded her about Newton’s innate intellectual abilities then Newton enrolled in higher education in Cambridge. In 1665 the great Plague that was ravaging Europe had come to Cambridge forcing the university to close. Newton returned home to pursue his private study. During these 18 months he conceived the methods of infinitesimal calculus, set foundations for his theory of light and colour, and gained significant insight into the law of planetary motion. Legend has it that at this time Newton experienced his famous inspiration of gravity with the falling apple. It is noteworthy that many great scientific discoveries have been made not during serious thinking or when doing a lot of calculations but while the mind is relaxed. In June 1669, Newton’s work was brought to the attention of the Mathematics community for the first time and shortly after he became a professor of Cambridge. As a professor, Newton was exempted from tutoring but required to deliver an annual course of lectures. Although his academic theories were remarkable, not everyone at the Royal Academy was enthusiastic about Newton’s discoveries. Among the dissenters Robert Hooke was a long term opponent of Newton. He questioned and attacked Newton’s methodology and conclusion. In Optic theories, Newton asserted that white light was a composite of all colours of the spectrum and the light was composed of particle while Hooke believed the light was composed of waves. Hooke wasn’t the only one to oppose Newton’s work. Unable to handling criticism, Newton went into a rage. At the end Newton suffered a complete nerve breakdown and chose a secluded life in 1678. During his hiatus from public life Newton returned to his study of gravitation and its effects on the orbits of planets. In 1687, Newton published “Mathematical Principles of Nature philosophy” which is known as Principia. It is said to be the single most influential book on physics and possibly all of science. The work offers an exact quantitative description of bodies in motion in the basic laws.
In 1703 Newton was elected President of the Royal Academy. In 1705, he was knighted by Queen Anne in England. Despite his fame, Newton’s life seemed far from perfect. He never married or made many friends. I think a combination of pride, insecurity and peculiar scientific inquiries of him. It wouldn’t be quite easy to have him as a company. In his later life, when asked for an assessment of his achievements he replied. “I do not know what I may appear to the world but to myself I seem to have been only a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself now and then in finding a smooth pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me” Newton died in 1727.
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