Isaac Newton was an English physicist known for his discoveries in physics, astronomy, optics, and mathematics. His work on inertia and gravity have made great strides throughout history. Learn more about the Isaac Newton Biography.
life of isaac newton
La isaac newton birth date it is exactly the 4th of January in the year 1643 in Woolsthorpe, he was born in a village near Grantham in Lincolnshire, he was the son of an uneducated man (also called Isaac), as a baby he was small enough to fit "in a very small bathtub" .
When he was just three years old, Newton's mother, Hannah (Ayscough), first left him with his grandmother to remarry and raise a second family with Barnabas Smith, a wealthy rector from nearby North Witham. Much has been made of Newton's posthumous birth, his mother's prolonged separation from him, and his incomparable hatred of his stepfather.
Until Hannah returned to Woolsthorpe in 1653 after the death of her second husband, Newton was denied her mother's attention, a possible reality of her complex character. Newton's childhood was anything but happy and throughout his life he was on the verge of emotional collapse, occasionally falling into violent and vindictive attacks on friend and foe alike.
Studies
Newton was trained at school to fulfill his studies as a farmer, but failed in this calling and returned to King's School in Grantham to prepare for entrance to Trinity College, Cambridge. Numerous anecdotes survive from this period about Newton's distraction as an early farmer and his performance as a student.
But the turning point in Newton's life came in June 1661 when he left Woolsthorpe for Cambridge University, there Newton entered a new world, one he could eventually call his own.
Although Cambridge was an excellent center of learning, the spirit of the scientific revolution had not yet penetrated its ancient curriculum, little is known of Newton's formal studies as an undergraduate, but he probably received large doses of Aristotle as well as others. classic authors.
To all appearances, his academic performance was not distinguished. In the year 1664 Isaac Barrow, the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, examined Newton's understanding of Euclid and found that it lacked much.
We now know that during his undergraduate years Newton was deeply attracted to the study from within, which he privately dominated under the works of René Descartes, Pierre Gassendi, Thomas Hobbes and other important figures of the scientific revolution.
A number of extant notebooks show that by 1664 Newton had begun to master Descartes Géométrie and other forms of mathematics far in advance of his masters. Elements of Euclid. Barrow, a talented mathematician, had yet to appreciate Newton's genius.
In 1665 Newton took his BA at Cambridge without honors or distinction. As the university was closed for the next two years due to plague, Newton returned to Woolsthorpe in the middle of the year. There, over the next 18 months, he made a series of original contributions to science.
One of Issaac's thoughts:
"This was all in the two plague years of 1665 and 1666, because in those days I was at my best for invention and cared more about mathematics and philosophy than at any other time."
In mathematics, Newton conceived his methods and calculations, laid the foundations for his theory of light and color, and gained significant insight into the problem of planetary motion, insights that eventually led to the publication of his Principia (The mathematical principles).
In April 1667, Newton returned to Cambridge and against all odds, he was elected a Junior Fellow at Trinity, success following good fortune, for the following year he became a Senior Fellow by taking his Master of Arts in 1669. and before he was 27, Isaac Barrow became a Lucasian professor of mathematics.
The duties of this appointment offered Newton the opportunity to organize the results of his earlier optical research, and in 1672, shortly after his election to the Royal Society, he released his first public paper, a brilliant but no less controversial study of optical power. color nature.
He eventually resumed his studies at Cambridge, heavily influenced by two years of solitary research. In 1669, he decided to show who is isaac newton? he agreed to expose his gift to one of his teachers and taught him mathematics. In this area is found the origin of the formula of «Newton's binomial«.
Discoveries
In the year 1671, when he dedicated himself to the study of optics and more precisely to the refraction of light (his work Optics was not published until 1704). Isaac Newton developed the first telescope without chromatic aberration, this object is now named after him: it is the Newton's telescope.
Due to his growing fame, the astronomer Edmond Halley contacted him to get his opinion on Kepler's laws (studies on the movement of the planets). Finding him convincing, he funds his new job.
Isaac Newton dedicates himself this time to a branch of physics, today called «newtonian mechanics«, which deals, among other things, with movement and speed in the year 1687. There he exposes his discoveries about universal gravitation and about the three famous laws, known Newton's laws. These laws describe the physical phenomena of inertia and forces exerted on objects.
In his time, he played a vital role in the Scientific Revolution, helping to advance the fields of physics, astronomy, mathematics, and the natural sciences. From this he established a legacy that would dominate the sciences for the next three centuries.
In fact, the term "Newtonian" came to be used by later generations to describe bodies of knowledge that owed their existence to his theories, and because of his extensive contributions, Isaac Newton is regarded as one of the most influential scholars in the history of science. science.
Newton's three laws of motion
To begin with, his "Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy," first published in 1687, laid the foundation for classical mechanics. In it, he formulated his Three Laws of Motion, which were derived from Johann Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion and his own mathematical description of gravity.
The first law, known as the “law of inertia”, states that:
“An object at rest will remain at rest unless acted on by an unbalanced force. A moving object continues to move with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted on by an unbalanced force.
The second law states that:
"Acceleration occurs when a force acts on a mass: the greater the mass of the object, the greater the force required to accelerate it."
The third and final law states that:
"For every action, there is an equal but opposite reaction."
universal gravity
He also formulated his law of Universal Gravitation, which states that each point mass attracts another point mass by a force that registers along the line that crosses both points. According to his calculations, this force is proportional to the product of the two masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. The formula for this theory can be expressed as:
Newton would go on to use these principles to explain the paths of comets, the tides, the precession of the equinoxes, and other astrophysical phenomena. This effectively removed the last doubts about the validity of the heliocentric model of the cosmos that argued for the structure of the sun (not Earth) was at the center of the planetary system.
His work also showed that the motion of objects on Earth and of celestial bodies could be described by the same principles.
Although Newton's inspiration for his theories on gravity is often attributed to the "Apple Incident", i.e. when he saw an apple fall from a tree, the story is considered faked by modern sources who argue that he came to his conclusions. over time. However, Newton himself described the incident and his contemporaries defend this claim.
shape of the earth
Additional contributions include his prediction that the Earth probably formed as an "oblate spheroid", i.e. a sphere that underwent flattening at the poles, this theory would later be vindicated by measurements by Maupertuis, la Condamine and others. in turn he helped to convince most scientists in continental Europe of the superiority of Newtonian mechanics over Descartes' earlier system.
In mathematical knowledge, this important scientist helped the study of power chains, transcended the binomial theorem to non-integer exponents, extended Newton's procedure to approximate the roots of a function and cataloged most of the curves of the cubic plane, he also shares prestige with Gottfried Leibniz for the development of the calculus.
These discoveries represented a great leap forward in the fields of mathematics, physics, and astronomy, allowing calculations that more accurately modeled the behavior of the universe than ever before.
Optics
In 1666, Newton began to contribute to the field of optics, first observing that color was a property of light when measured through a prism, and from 1670 to 1672, he lectured at Cambridge University on optics and investigated the refraction of light, showing that the multicolored spectrum produced by a prism could be recomposed into white light with a lens and a second prism.
As a result of his research, he came to theorize that color is the result of objects interacting with already colored light rather than objects that generate the color, which is known as Newton's theory of color.
Furthermore, he concluded that the lens of any refracting telescope would suffer from the scattering of light in colors (chromatic aberration), as a proof of concept, he built a telescope using a mirror as an objective to avoid that problem, this was the first known functional reflecting telescope that exists, the design of which is now known as a Newtonian telescope.
Other achievements
He also formulated an empirical law of cooling, studied the speed of sound and introduced the notion of a Newtonian fluid, this term is used to describe any fluid where the viscous stresses arising from its flow, at each point, are linearly proportional to the rate change of its deformation over time.
So what did Isaac Newton discover? Theories that would dominate the fields of science, astronomy, physics, and the natural world for centuries to come, his ideas would go on to influence such luminaries as Joseph-Louis Lagrange and Albert Einstein, the latter of whom is the only scientist to believe himself who left a comparable legacy.
The laws of dynamics
Dynamics considers the forces that affect the motion of moving objects and systems, Newton's laws of motion are the basis of dynamics. These laws provide an example of the breadth and simplicity of the principles under which nature works.
They are also universal laws in the sense that they apply to similar situations on Earth as well as in space, the study of motion is kinematics, but kinematics only describes the way objects move: their speed and their acceleration .
The development of Newton's laws marks the transition from the Renaissance to the modern age, this transition was characterized by a revolutionary change in the way people thought about the physical universe.
For many centuries natural philosophers debated the nature of the universe relying largely on certain rules of logic with great weight given to the thoughts of earlier classical philosophers such as Aristotle (384–322 BC). Among the many great thinkers who contributed to this change were Newton and Galileo.
Galileo was instrumental in establishing the observation as the absolute determiner of truth, rather than "logical" argument. Galileo's use of the telescope was his most notable achievement in demonstrating the importance of observation, he discovered moons orbiting the Planet Jupiter and made other observations that were inconsistent with certain ancient ideas and religious dogmas.
For this reason and for the way he dealt with those in authority, Galileo was tried by the Inquisition and punished. He spent the last years of his life under a form of house arrest.
Because others before Galileo had also made discoveries by observing the nature of the universe and because repeated observations verified Galileo's, his work could not be suppressed or denied, after his death all his work was verified by others and his ideas they were eventually accepted by the church and scientific communities.
Isaac Newton's contributions
Throughout his life the famous scientist Isaac Newton made great contributions to humanity that still commemorate his name today through the following:
development of the calculation
For two miraculous years, during the time of the Great Plague of 1665, young Newton developed a new theory of light, discovered and quantified gravitation, and pioneered a revolutionary new approach to mathematics: infinitesimal calculus.
The average slope of a curve
The initial problem that Newton was facing was that, although it was quite easy to represent and calculate the average slope of a curve (for example, the increasing speed of an object on a time-distance graph), the slope of a curve was constantly changing and there was no method to give the exact slope at any single point on the curve, i.e. effectively the slope of a line tangent to the curve at that point.
Intuitively, the slope at a particular point can be approximated by taking the average slope ("increase over run") of smaller and smaller segments of the curve. As the segment of the curve under consideration approaches zero (that is, an infinitesimal change in x), the slope calculation gets closer and closer to the exact slope at a point.
Without going into too much complicated detail, Newton (and his contemporary Gottfried Leibniz independently) calculated a derivative function f' (x) which gives the slope at any point of a function f (x). This process of calculating the slope or derivative of a curve or function is called differential calculus or differentiation (or, in Newton's terminology, the "method of fluxions" called the instantaneous rate of change at a particular point on a curve the «fluxion» and the changing values of x e y the "fluids").
Once the derivative function is established for a particular curve, it is easy to calculate the slope at any particular point on that curve, simply by plugging in a value for x. In the case of a time-distance graph, for example, this slope represents the velocity of the object at a particular point.
fluid method
The "opposite" of differentiation is integration or integral calculus (in Newton's terminology, the " fluid method «) and together differentiation and integration are the two main operations of calculus, Newton's fundamental theorem of calculus states that differentiation and integration are inverse operations, so that if a function is first integrated and then differentiated ( or vice versa), the original function is restored.
The integral of a curve can be considered as the formula to calculate the area bounded by the curve and the axis x between two defined limits. For example, in a graph of velocity versus time, the area » below the curve » would represent the distance traveled. Essentially, the integration relies on a limiting procedure that approximates the area of a curvilinear region by dividing it into infinitely thin vertical slabs or columns.
Newton decided not to publish his revolutionary mathematics immediately, worried that he would be ridiculed for his unconventional ideas, and was content to circulate his thoughts among friends, after all, he had many other interests, such as philosophy, alchemy, and his work in science. Royal Mint.
However, in 1684, the German Leibniz published his own independent version of the theory, while Newton did not publish anything on the subject until 1693. Although the Royal Society, after due deliberation, gave credit for the first discovery to Newton ( first publication credit to Leibniz).
Something of a scandal arose when it was made public that the subsequent Royal Society plagiarism accusation against Leibniz was actually written by no other Newton, sparking an ongoing controversy that tarnished the careers of both men.
Generalized binomial theorem
Despite being his best-known contribution to mathematics, calculus was by no means Newton's only contribution. He is credited with generalized binomial theorem, which describes the algebraic expansion of the powers of a binomial (an algebraic expression with two terms, such as a 2 - b 2); made substantial contributions to the theory of finite differences (mathematical expressions of the form f (x + b) – f (x + a)).
He was one of the first to use fractional exponents and coordinate geometry to derive solutions to the Diophantine equations (algebraic equations with whole number variables only); he developed the so-called "Newton's method" to find successively better approximations to the zeros or roots of a function; he was the first to use infinite power series with any confidence; etc.
In 1687, Newton published his "Principia" or "The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy", generally recognized as the best scientific book ever written. In it, he presented his theories of motion, gravity, and mechanics, explained the eccentric orbits of comets, Seas and oceans and its variations, the precision of the axis of the Earth and the movement of the Moon.
Later in life, he wrote a number of religious treatises dealing with the literal interpretation of the Bible, devoted a great deal of time to alchemy, served as a Member of Parliament for a few years, and became perhaps the best-known Master of the Bible. Royal Mint in 1699, a position he held until his death in 1727.
In 1703, he was made president of the Royal Society and in 1705, he became the first scientist to be knighted, mercury poisoning from his alchemical pursuits perhaps explaining Newton's eccentricity in adult life and possibly also his eventual death.
light research
Isaac Newton began to treat the luminous phenomena around 1660 when the debate on the nature of light was very lively. The events of Galileo Galilei and the telescope had had a great resonance in academic circles and after this, the interests related to the construction techniques of optical instruments had grown significantly.
One of the most debated problems during the period concerned chromatic aberration in telescope objectives, which was thought to depend on the shape of the lenses, chromatic aberration depending on the fact that the refractive index of a transparent medium varies with the wavelength of light: therefore, a lens has different focal lengths for different colors of light so that the image of a point surrounded by an iridescent halo appears.
In an attempt to solve the problem, the young Newton examines the possibility of eliminating the defect with conical lenses, but, at the same time, analyzes the causes that produce the chromatism, from these attempts the design and construction of a reflecting telescope arises. uses, instead of lenses, a concave spherical mirror. Newton is convinced that chromatic aberration cannot be eliminated and this pushes him to design a reflecting telescope that is obviously free of the defect.
Newton's response to his opponents tends to emphasize the fact that there is nothing in his theory that has not been deduced directly from observations and experiments, and this makes it absolutely irrefutable. Furthermore, his statements about the nature of light are not essential to the theory: the wave interpretation can equally be reconciled with the heterogeneous nature assigned to light.
As for the medium in which light propagates, Newton will declare himself for or against the existence of the ether according to the particular phenomenon examined. In this regard, in a matter added in a later edition where Newton states that:
» The properties of light established by experiment are indubitable. Some of them can be interpreted on the basis of the ether hypothesis, while others onlythey can be explained by the movement of the particles, between which the forces of attraction and repulsion act. However, the most accurate is not to formulate hypotheses and describe phenomena on the basis of experiments and observations, according to the inductive method».
Alchemy
Newton is an emblematic case since he devoted a considerable part of his intellectual energies not only to mathematics, mechanics and optics, for which he became famous, but also to the study of alchemy and biblical prophecies, it is not surprising that some enemies of rationality may be happy with it, but they too are wrong.
It is true that Newton showed that he had a mental horizon not very different from that of other intellectuals of his time, but, even within what with an incorrect term we could call his "error", he did not fail to demonstrate his genius. This fact is effectively summarized in an article published a few years ago in the magazine "El Rebuscado", entitled: "Isaac Newton, an alchemist different from the others".
Before describing how this legendary figure dealt with a subject that we now consider irrational, it is necessary to make an important clarification: the fact that Newton practiced alchemy or the "deciphering" of the prophecies, in no way changes the importance of the discoveries. theoretical and experimental scientists for whom he is celebrated today.
Furthermore, Newton wrote extensively on alchemy, but preferred to keep his own manuscripts to himself rather than release them to the press.
State-of-the-art research has revealed that the famous scientist spent more than thirty years composing, transcribing, and expounding alchemical texts, resulting in a vast number of documents totaling approximately one million handwritten words.
In fact, Newton seems to have considered himself one of an elite alchemical brotherhood, even going so far as to coin private anagrams of his name in the secret custom of the sons of art.
Discarded as the stuff of foolish and greedy fantasies, alchemy was seen as a species of scientists, unworthy of a scientific mind as great as Isaac Newton's.
As a result, Newton's alma mater, Cambridge University, was given the opportunity to archive its voluminous cache of alchemical recipes in 1888, which they refused. Instead, the documents eventually sold at auction in 1936, fetching a combined total of just over 9,000 British pounds, a relatively paltry sum given Newton's stature.
Theology
Isaac Newton's fame as a physicist is enshrined in the footsteps of human history, but if he is due the utmost respect for his scientific thought, it is often underestimated that the man who developed the theory of universal gravity has also written extensively on theology. In particular, he was fascinated by metaphysical machinations, the Jewish faith, the structure of the Jewish Temple, and the end times.
It is not surprising that Newton's theological writings go unnoticed, since most of the time after his death they were in the hands of his heirs, who tried to donate them to the University of Cambridge shortly after his death. If most of his works were accepted, scholars would have no interest in his reflections on the divine.
Newton discovered that the Hebrew Scriptures present God as a single entity, like the Father, he did not believe that the human body contained a soul and therefore the only way one could hope to find eternal life was through the Resurrection .
In 1936, Newton's estate auctioned off these works and most of these writings were awarded to Abraham Shalom Yahuda, a Jerusalem-born biblical scholar who later donated them to the National Library of Israel (NLI) after his death in 1967. Thank you Due to the diligent work of Sharon Cohen and the NLI, these theological writings are receiving unprecedented attention.
Newton was also interested in prophetic symbols, in this case for the Beast, who in XNUMXth-century mentality was considered a representative of the inner vice of the human mind. Newton, however, believed that the Beast referred to a political body or the individual person who heads such an organization.
Cohen explains that Newton learned to read Hebrew to help him study the Hebrew texts and examine the Hebrew Temple. The scientist saw the latter as the model of the universe.
An example of this can be seen in the Jerusalem Temple, which Newton considered to be the model of the heliocentric solar system, with its central element, the altar, to represent the sun. Newton believed that the Temple in Jerusalem was the "site of the Apocalypse" where the Apocalypse would begin.
Newton praised the ancient theologians for their fusion of science and religion, who has always proposed a marriage between science and faith, perhaps he was inspired by this ancient practice for his writings.
Newton's public performances
In 1672, Newton became a member of the Royal Society, a group of scientists committed to the experimental method, he presented one of his new telescopes to the Royal Society along with his findings on light.
The Royal Society set up a committee led by physicist Robert Hooke to evaluate Newton's findings. Hooke was a scientist employed by the Royal Society to evaluate new inventions. However, Hooke had his own ideas about light and was slow to accept the truth of Newton's findings. This surprised and disappointed Newton, who even considered not circulating his findings in the future.
Isaac Newton lived in a time when politics, religion, and education were not separate. King Charles II mandated that all who taught at places like Trinity College, where Church of England ministers were trained, should be ordained Church of England ministers after seven years, this included people like Newton, who taught just math and science, not theology.
Newton was an imposing leader, obsessed with power and reputation. Although he continued to publish his own work, he also worked to make and break the reputations of other men. Newton remained an influential figure, surrounded by a new generation of students who raised his ideas.
Comparison of Isaac Newton with other scientists of the time
Newton adapted to a broader group of sages such as the political philosopher John Locke who, although many of the continent's scientists continued to educate the mechanical world according to Aristotle, a young woman from the generation of British scientists was captivated by the new Newton's approach to the physical world and recognized him as its leader.
Aristotle said that the natural state of motion of an object is at rest in its natural place. Newton has no natural places and says that his natural state of motion is in a straight line at a constant speed. Aristotle says that objects move on their own, seeking their own natural place.
Newton says that an object cannot move on its own. Aristotle gives completely different accounts of the Earth movements and of objects close to it, as well as celestial bodies.
Newton's law of universal gravitation is universal. Applying to all alike, Aristotle's worldview was enforced by the centralized power of the Catholic Church. Newton's world view came not from authority, but from observation, something anyone could do.
Writings
Among the most striking writings of the scientist Isaac Newton are the following:
- "In the year 1671 – Method of Fluxions (published 1736)"
- «In the year 1684 – De motu corporum in gyrum»
- «In the year 1707 – Arithmetica universalis»
Even after his physical departure the following writings were famous:
- “In the year 1728 – The Earth System»
- «In the year 1733 – Observations on the prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of Saint John»
- "In the Year 1754 – Historical Account of Two Notable Corruptions of Scripture"
eponymy
Apart from all the scientific formulas, physical and mathematical elements that have their name, you have to:
- The lunar crater Newton carries this name in his memory.
- The asteroid (8000) Isaac Newton evokes his name.
- The highest mountain in Norway also bears his name.
How did Isaac Newton die?
By the time he reached his 80s, Newton was experiencing digestion problems and had to drastically change his diet and mobility.
In March of the year 1727, Newton had a very strong pain in the abdominal part and for this reason he lost consciousness immediately, so as not to regain consciousness. He died the next day, exactly on March 31, 1727, at the age of 84.
A legacy in time
Newton's fame grew even more after his death, as many of his contemporaries proclaimed him the greatest genius who ever lived. Perhaps a slight exaggeration, but his discoveries had a major impact on Western thought, leading to comparisons with Plato, Aristotle, and Galileo.
Of course, Newton was proven wrong on some of his key assumptions. In the XNUMXth century, Albert Einstein would reverse Newton's concept of the universe, asserting that space, distance, and motion were not absolute but relative, and that the universe was more fantastic than Newton had conceived.
Newton might not have been surprised: in later life, when asked for an assessment of his achievements, he replied:
“I do not know what I will appear to the world; but it seems to me that I have only been like a child playing by the seashore and from time to time I turn aside to find a stone smoother or a shell more beautiful than the ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lies undiscovered In front of me ".
Newton said: We live in a well-ordered and predictable universe full of things we can observe. We exist in it as perfectly rational agents capable of observing everything there is, capable of using our reason to find the laws that govern its behavior. As such rational agents, we too become predictable, allowing the new human sciences to explain how we behave.