Isaac Newton

Sir Isaac Newton, (1642-1727), English mathematician and physicist who formulated the law of universal gravitation was born in Woolsthorpe, near Grantham in Lincolnshire, England.

Newton was one of the inventors of the branch of mathematics called calculus. He also solved the mysteries of light and optics, formulated the three laws of motion, and derived from them the law of universal gravitation.

Newton's first achievement was in mathematics. He generalized the methods that were being used to draw tangents to curves and to calculate the area swept by curves, and he recognized that the two procedures were inverse operations. In 1669 Newton was appointed as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge.

Optics was another area of Newton's early interests. In trying to explain how colors occur, he arrived at the idea that sunlight is a heterogeneous blend of different rays. Newton demonstrated his theory of colors by passing a beam of sunlight through a type of prism, which split the beam into separate colors. In 1704, however, Newton published Opticks, which explained his theories in detail.

Newton is probably best known for discovering universal gravitation, which explains that all bodies in space and on earth are affected by the force called gravity. He published this theory in his book Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica in 1687.

The Unit of force, the newton, N, a derived Unit is named in his honour.

The newton is the SI unit of force. One newton is equal to the force required to accelerate a body with the mass one kilogram by one metre per second per second.