This would normally have required him to be ordained a priest of the Church of England, but Newton obtained a special permission from King Charles II to be appointed without being ordained, as his religious views were somewhat orthodox. In 1669 he was appointed Lucasian Professor of Mathematics. He went to school at Grantham, and studied at Trinity College, Cambridge from 1661. Newton was born at Woolsthorpe Manor in Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth, a hamlet in Lincolnshire. The manuscript will be available online for enthusiasts to explore.Sir Isaac Newton by Kneller Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1727) was an English scientist and mathematician, sometimes considered the greatest scientist who ever lived. The manuscript, which had been hidden in a private collection for decades and turned up at an auction at Bonhams, provided the recipe for "philosophic" mercury, which was considered a step in the process for concocting a mysterious substance known the philosopher's stone this material was thought to have supernatural powers - the ability to turn any metal into gold and to grant immortality. Isaac Newton died in 1727.Īmong his more eccentric pastimes, Newton also dabbled (or more than dabbled) in alchemy, also called chymistry, with some historians estimating that he wrote more than a million words of alchemical notes, according to curator of rare books at the Chemical Heritage Foundation, James Voelkel.Īnd in March 2016, researchers announced they had found bought a 17th-century alchemy manuscript written by Newton. He had a second breakdown in 1693, then retired from research. When James was later driven out of England, Newton was elected to Parliament. Later, recovered, he spoke out against King James II, who wanted only Roman Catholics to be in powerful government and academic positions. Newton's research stopped in 1679 when he had a nervous breakdown. It all led to his seminal work, published in 1687, called the "Principia" - considered by many as the greatest science book ever written. Urged by astronomer Edmond Halley (who was studying his now-famous comet), Newton continued to study his notion of gravity and apply it to the motions of the Earth, sun and moon. This was not something Newton actually imagined building, but rather a way to think about his theories. He also conceived of an "orbital cannon" that would poke out of a huge mountain, up in space, and with just the right amount of gunpowder could put a cannonball into orbit. It's said that Newton invented a cat door so his cats would stop scratching to get in, but the truth of that one is a bit sketchy. Mere math and algebra weren't enough to explain the ideas in his head, so he helped invent calculus (German mathematician Gottfried Leibniz is typically credited with developing it independently at about the same time). In his later years, he developed anti-counterfeiting measures for coins, including the ridges you see on quarters today.Īmong his biggest " inventions" was calculus. He did invent reflecting lenses for telescopes, which produced clearer images in a smaller telescope compared with the refracting models of the time. While he's best known for his work on gravity, Newton was a tinkerer, too, but more with ideas than physical inventions. A couple of centuries later, Albert Einstein puzzled over how to reconcile Newton's law of gravity with special relativity, which after several years led to Einstein's theory of general relativity. Newton once said that if he had achieved anything in his research, it was "by standing on the shoulders of giants." The quote was prophetic.
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