Isaac newton what is he famous for

Although Newton obviously had far less time available to devote to solitary research during his London years than he had had in Cambridge, he did not entirely cease to be productive. The first English edition of his Opticks finally appeared in , appended to which were two mathematical treatises, his first work on the calculus to appear in print. This edition was followed by a Latin edition in and a second English edition in , each containing important Queries on key topics in natural philosophy beyond those in its predecessor.

The second edition of the Principia , on which Newton had begun work at the age of 66 in , was published in , with a third edition in Though the original plan for a radical restructuring had long been abandoned, the fact that virtually every page of the Principia received some modifications in the second edition shows how carefully Newton, often prodded by his editor Roger Cotes, reconsidered everything in it; and important parts were substantially rewritten not only in response to Continental criticisms, but also because of new data, including data from experiments on resistance forces carried out in London.

Focused effort on the third edition began in , when Newton was 80 years old, and while the revisions are far less extensive than in the second edition, it does contain substantive additions and modfications, and it surely has claim to being the edition that represents his most considered views.

Newton died on 20 March at the age of His contemporaries' conception of him nevertheless continued to expand as a consequence of various posthumous publications, including The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended ; the work originally intended to be the last book of the Principia , The System of the World , in both English and Latin ; Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St.

Even then, however, the works that had been published represented only a limited fraction of the total body of papers that had been left in the hands of Catherine and John Conduitt.

The five volume collection of Newton's works edited by Samuel Horsley —85 did not alter this situation. Through the marriage of the Conduitts' daughter Catherine and subsequent inheritance, this body of papers came into the possession of Lord Portsmouth, who agreed in to allow it to be reviewed by scholars at Cambridge University John Couch Adams, George Stokes, H.

Luard, and G. They issued a catalogue in , and the university then retained all the papers of a scientific character. With the notable exception of W. The remaining papers were returned to Lord Portsmouth, and then ultimately sold at auction in to various parties. Serious scholarly work on them did not get underway until the s, and much remains to be done on them. Three factors stand in the way of giving an account of Newton's work and influence.

First is the contrast between the public Newton, consisting of publications in his lifetime and in the decade or two following his death, and the private Newton, consisting of his unpublished work in math and physics, his efforts in chymistry — that is, the 17th century blend of alchemy and chemistry — and his writings in radical theology — material that has become public mostly since World War II.

Only the public Newton influenced the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, yet any account of Newton himself confined to this material can at best be only fragmentary. Second is the contrast, often shocking, between the actual content of Newton's public writings and the positions attributed to him by others, including most importantly his popularizers.

Third is the contrast between the enormous range of subjects to which Newton devoted his full concentration at one time or another during the 60 years of his intellectual career — mathematics, optics, mechanics, astronomy, experimental chemistry, alchemy, and theology — and the remarkably little information we have about what drove him or his sense of himself.

Biographers and analysts who try to piece together a unified picture of Newton and his intellectual endeavors often end up telling us almost as much about themselves as about Newton. Compounding the diversity of the subjects to which Newton devoted time are sharp contrasts in his work within each subject. The most important element common to these two was Newton's deep commitment to having the empirical world serve not only as the ultimate arbiter, but also as the sole basis for adopting provisional theory.

Throughout all of this work he displayed distrust of what was then known as the method of hypotheses — putting forward hypotheses that reach beyond all known phenomena and then testing them by deducing observable conclusions from them.

Newton insisted instead on having specific phenomena decide each element of theory, with the goal of limiting the provisional aspect of theory as much as possible to the step of inductively generalizing from the specific phenomena. This stance is perhaps best summarized in his fourth Rule of Reasoning, added in the third edition of the Principia , but adopted as early as his Optical Lectures of the s:.

In experimental philosophy, propositions gathered from phenomena by induction should be taken to be either exactly or very nearly true notwithstanding any contrary hypotheses, until yet other phenomena make such propositions either more exact or liable to exceptions.

This rule should be followed so that arguments based on induction may not be nullified by hypotheses. Such a commitment to empirically driven science was a hallmark of the Royal Society from its very beginnings, and one can find it in the research of Kepler, Galileo, Huygens, and in the experimental efforts of the Royal Academy of Paris. Newton, however, carried this commitment further first by eschewing the method of hypotheses and second by displaying in his Principia and Opticks how rich a set of theoretical results can be secured through well-designed experiments and mathematical theory designed to allow inferences from phenomena.

The success of those after him in building on these theoretical results completed the process of transforming natural philosophy into modern empirical science. Newton's commitment to having phenomena decide the elements of theory required questions to be left open when no available phenomena could decide them.

Newton contrasted himself most strongly with Leibniz in this regard at the end of his anonymous review of the Royal Society's report on the priority dispute over the calculus:.

Newton could have said much the same about the question of what light consists of, waves or particles, for while he felt that the latter was far more probable, he saw it still not decided by any experiment or phenomenon in his lifetime.

Leaving questions about the ultimate cause of gravity and the constitution of light open was the other factor in his work driving a wedge between natural philosophy and empirical science. The many other areas of Newton's intellectual endeavors made less of a difference to eighteenth century philosophy and science. In mathematics, Newton was the first to develop a full range of algorithms for symbolically determining what we now call integrals and derivatives, but he subsequently became fundamentally opposed to the idea, championed by Leibniz, of transforming mathematics into a discipline grounded in symbol manipulation.

Newton thought the only way of rendering limits rigorous lay in extending geometry to incorporate them, a view that went entirely against the tide in the development of mathematics in the eighteenth and nineteenth ceturies. In chemistry Newton conducted a vast array of experiments, but the experimental tradition coming out of his Opticks , and not his experiments in chemistry, lay behind Lavoisier calling himself a Newtonian; indeed, one must wonder whether Lavoisier would even have associated his new form of chemistry with Newton had he been aware of Newton's fascination with writings in the alchemical tradition.

And even in theology, there is Newton the anti-Trinitarian mild heretic who was not that much more radical in his departures from Roman and Anglican Christianity than many others at the time, and Newton, the wild religious zealot predicting the end of the Earth, who did not emerge to public view until quite recently.

There is surprisingly little cross-referencing of themes from one area of Newton's endeavors to another. The common element across almost all of them is that of a problem-solver extraordinaire , taking on one problem at a time and staying with it until he had found, usually rather promptly, a solution.

All of his technical writings display this, but so too does his unpublished manuscript reconstructing Solomon's Temple from the biblical account of it and his posthumously published Chronology of the Ancient Kingdoms in which he attempted to infer from astronomical phenomena the dating of major events in the Old Testament. The Newton one encounters in his writings seems to compartmentalize his interests at any given moment.

Whether he had a unified conception of what he was up to in all his intellectual efforts, and if so what this conception might be, has been a continuing source of controversy among Newton scholars. Of course, were it not for the Principia , there would be no entry at all for Newton in an Encyclopedia of Philosophy. In science, he would have been known only for the contributions he made to optics, which, while notable, were no more so than those made by Huygens and Grimaldi, neither of whom had much impact on philosophy; and in mathematics, his failure to publish would have relegated his work to not much more than a footnote to the achievements of Leibniz and his school.

But this adds still a further complication, for the Principia itself was substantially different things to different people. The press-run of the first edition estimated to be around was too small for it to have been read by all that many individuals. The second edition also appeared in two pirated Amsterdam editions, and hence was much more widely available, as was the third edition and its English and later French translation. The Principia , however, is not an easy book to read, so one must still ask, even of those who had access to it, whether they read all or only portions of the book and to what extent they grasped the full complexity of what they read.

The detailed commentary provided in the three volume Jesuit edition —42 made the work less daunting. An important question to ask of any philosophers commenting on Newton is, what primary sources had they read? The s witnessed a major transformation in the standing of the science in the Principia. The Principia itself had left a number of loose-ends, most of them detectable by only highly discerning readers. By , however, some of these loose-ends had been cited in Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle's elogium for Newton [ 4 ] and in John Machin's appendix to the English translation of the Principia , raising questions about just how secure Newton's theory of gravity was, empirically.

The shift on the continent began in the s when Maupertuis convinced the Royal Academy to conduct expeditions to Lapland and Peru to determine whether Newton's claims about the non-spherical shape of the Earth and the variation of surface gravity with latitude are correct. Euler was the central figure in turning the three laws of motion put forward by Newton in the Principia into Newtonian mechanics. Most of the effort of eighteenth century mechanics was devoted to solving problems of the motion of rigid bodies, elastic strings and bodies, and fluids, all of which require principles beyond Newton's three laws.

From the s on this led to alternative approaches to formulating a general mechanics, employing such different principles as the conservation of vis viva , the principle of least action, and d'Alembert's principle. During the s Euler developed his equations for the motion of fluids, and in the s, his equations of rigid-body motion.

What we call Newtonian mechanics was accordingly something for which Euler was more responsible than Newton. Although some loose-ends continued to defy resolution until much later in the eighteenth century, by the early s Newton's theory of gravity had become the accepted basis for ongoing research among almost everyone working in orbital astronomy.

Clairaut's successful prediction of the month of return of Halley's comet at the end of this decade made a larger segment of the educated public aware of the extent to which empirical grounds for doubting Newton's theory of gravity had largely disappeared.

Even so, one must still ask of anyone outside active research in gravitational astronomy just how aware they were of the developments from ongoing efforts when they made their various pronouncements about the standing of the science of the Principia among the community of researchers.

The naivety of these pronouncements cuts both ways: on the one hand, they often reflected a bloated view of how secure Newton's theory was at the time, and, on the other, they often underestimated how strong the evidence favoring it had become. Newton's childhood was anything but happy, and throughout his life he verged on emotional collapse, occasionally falling into violent and vindictive attacks against friend and foe alike.

W ith his mother's return to Woolsthorpe in , Newton was taken from school to fulfill his birthright as a farmer. Happily, he failed in this calling, and returned to King's School at Grantham to prepare for entrance to Trinity College, Cambridge. Numerous anecdotes survive from this period about Newton's absent-mindedness as a fledging farmer and his lackluster performance as a student.

But the turning point in Newton's life came in June when he left Woolsthorpe for Cambridge University. Here Newton entered a new world, one he could eventually call his own. A lthough Cambridge was an outstanding center of learning, the spirit of the scientific revolution had yet to penetrate its ancient and somewhat ossified curriculum.

Little is known of Newton's formal studies as an undergraduate, but he likely received large doses of Aristotle as well as other classical authors. And by all appearances his academic performance was undistinguished. Barrow, himself a gifted mathematician, had yet to appreciate Newton's genius. I n Newton took his bachelor's degree at Cambridge without honors or distinction. Since the university was closed for the next two years because of plague, Newton returned to Woolsthorpe in midyear.

There, in the following 18 months, he made a series of original contributions to science. As he later recalled, 'All this was in the two plague years of and , for in those days I was in my prime of age for invention, and minded mathematics and philosophy more than at any time since. I n April , Newton returned to Cambridge and, against stiff odds, was elected a minor fellow at Trinity. Success followed good fortune.

In the next year he became a senior fellow upon taking his master of arts degree, and in , before he had reached his 27th birthday, he succeeded Isaac Barrow as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics. The duties of this appointment offered Newton the opportunity to organize the results of his earlier optical researches, and in , shortly after his election to the Royal Society, he communicated his first public paper, a brilliant but no less controversial study on the nature of color.

I n the first of a series of bitter disputes, Newton locked horns with the society's celebrated curator of experiments, the bright but brittle Robert Hooke. The ensuing controversy, which continued until , established a pattern in Newton's behavior. After an initial skirmish, he quietly retreated.

Nonetheless, in Newton ventured another yet another paper, which again drew lightning, this time charged with claims that he had plagiarized from Hooke. The charges were entirely ungrounded. Twice burned, Newton withdrew. I n , Newton suffered a serious emotional breakdown, and in the following year his mother died.

Newton's response was to cut off contact with others and engross himself in alchemical research. These studies, once an embarrassment to Newton scholars, were not misguided musings but rigorous investigations into the hidden forces of nature. Newton's alchemical studies opened theoretical avenues not found in the mechanical philosophy, the world view that sustained his early work.

While the mechanical philosophy reduced all phenomena to the impact of matter in motion, the alchemical tradition upheld the possibility of attraction and repulsion at the particulate level.

Newton's later insights in celestial mechanics can be traced in part to his alchemical interests. By combining action-at-a-distance and mathematics, Newton transformed the mechanical philosophy by adding a mysterious but no less measurable quantity, gravitational force.

I n , as tradition has it, Newton observed the fall of an apple in his garden at Woolsthorpe, later recalling, 'In the same year I began to think of gravity extending to the orb of the Moon.

In fact, all evidence suggests that the concept of universal gravitation did not spring full-blown from Newton's head in but was nearly 20 years in gestation. Ironically, Robert Hooke helped give it life. In November , Hooke initiated an exchange of letters that bore on the question of planetary motion. Although Newton hastily broke off the correspondence, Hooke's letters provided a conceptual link between central attraction and a force falling off with the square of distance.

Sometime in early , Newton appears to have quietly drawn his own conclusions. M eanwhile, in the coffeehouses of London, Hooke, Edmund Halley, and Christopher Wren struggled unsuccessfully with the problem of planetary motion. Finally, in August , Halley paid a legendary visit to Newton in Cambridge, hoping for an answer to his riddle: What type of curve does a planet describe in its orbit around the sun, assuming an inverse square law of attraction? When Halley posed the question, Newton's ready response was 'an ellipse.

Although Newton had privately answered one of the riddles of the universe--and he alone possessed the mathematical ability to do so--he had characteristically misplaced the calculation. After further discussion he promised to send Halley a fresh calculation forthwith. In partial fulfillment of his promise Newton produced his De Motu of From that seed, after nearly two years of intense labor, the Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica appeared. Arguably, it is the most important book published in the history of science.

But if the Principia was Newton's brainchild, Hooke and Halley were nothing less than midwives. A lthough the Principia was well received, its future was cast in doubt before it appeared.

Here again Hooke was center stage, this time claiming not without justification that his letters of earned him a role in Newton's discovery.

But to no effect. Newton was so furious with Hooke that he threatened to suppress Book III of the Principia altogether, finally denouncing science as 'an impertinently litigious lady. But instead of acknowledging Hooke's contribution Newton systematically deleted every possible mention of Hooke's name. Newton's hatred for Hooke was consumptive. Indeed, Newton later withheld publication of his Opticks and virtually withdrew from the Royal Society until Hooke's death in A fter publishing the Principia , Newton became more involved in public affairs.

In he was elected to represent Cambridge in Parliament, and during his stay in London he became acquainted with John Locke, the famous philosopher, and Nicolas Fatio de Duillier, a brilliant young mathematician who became an intimate friend. In , however, Newton suffered a severe nervous disorder, not unlike his breakdown of The cause is open to interpretation: overwork; the stress of controversy; the unexplained loss of friendship with Fatio; or perhaps chronic mercury poisoning, the result of nearly three decades of alchemical research.

Each factor may have played a role. We only know Locke and Samuel Pepys received strange and seemingly deranged letters that prompted concern for Newton's 'discomposure in head, or mind, or both. His new position proved 'most proper,' and he left Cambridge for London without regret. D uring his London years Newton enjoyed power and worldly success. His position at the Mint assured a comfortable social and economic status, and he was an active and able administrator.

After the death of Hooke in , Newton was elected president of the Royal Society and was annually reelected until his death. In he published his second major work, the Opticks , based largely on work completed decades before. He was knighted in A lthough his creative years had passed, Newton continued to exercise a profound influence on the development of science. In effect, the Royal Society was Newton's instrument, and he played it to his personal advantage.

They are stated as follows:. These laws define the effect that the absence or presence of a force has on objects. This troika of axioms defined the framework of mechanics, through which the dynamics of forces and their effects can be analyzed. With these laws, physics made the transition from an empirical field to a science with sound theoretical foundations.

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. Many people may have observed apples and all kinds of other things falling down, before Newton, but none of them followed the broad generalization that it represented. Even moon falls towards the Earth and Earth towards the Sun, in the same way!

That is what Newton figured out. For the first time, man could understand the motion of planets and satellites and give it a rational explanation. A gravitational force acts between two particles even though they are not in contact with each other. That is, it manifests as an action at a distance. Newton was fascinated with the field of optics and not surprisingly, made some major discoveries. His prime focus was unraveling 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 , through the book — Opticks. What the principia did for mechanics, this book did for the field of optics, fundamentally revolutionizing it.

Here are some of his most important findings. He demonstrated this with the use of a prism which dispersed a beam of white light into wavelengths of different hues. Through this finding, he overturned the prevalent notion since Aristotelian times which stated that light was inherently white and colorless. His experiments revealed that color arose from reflection and transmission of light and primarily from selective absorption of light by materials.