Sir Isaac Newton

Sir Isaac Newton
Godfrey Kneller's 1689 portrait of Isaac Newton (age 46).
Born	25 December 1642 [NS: 4 January 1643][1] Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England
Died	20 March 1726/7 (aged 84) [OS: 20 March 1726  NS: 31 March 1727][1] Kensington, Middlesex, England, Great Britain
Resting place	Westminster Abbey
Residence	England
Nationality	English (later British)
Fields	Physics Natural philosophy Mathematics Astronomy Alchemy Christian theology Economics
Institutions	University of Cambridge Royal Society Royal Mint
Alma mater	Trinity College, Cambridge
Academic advisors	Isaac Barrow[2] Benjamin Pulleyn[3][4]
Notable students	Roger Cotes William Whiston
Known for	Newtonian mechanics Universal gravitation Calculus Optics Binomial series Principia Newton's method
Influences	Johannes Kepler Galileo Galilei Henry More[5] Polish Brethren[6] Robert Boyle[7]
Influenced	Nicolas Fatio de Duillier John Keill Voltaire
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Sir Isaac Newton PRS MP (/ˈnjuːtən/;^[8] 25 December 1642 – 20 March 1726/7^[1]) was an English physicist and mathematician (described in his own day as a "natural philosopher") who is widely recognised as one of the most influential scientists of all time and as a key figure in the scientific revolution. His book Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica ("Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy"), first published in 1687, laid the foundations for classical mechanics. Newton also made seminal contributions to optics and shares credit with Gottfried Leibniz for the development of calculus.
Newton's Principia formulated the laws of motion and universal gravitation, which dominated scientists' view of the physical universe for the next three centuries. By deriving Kepler's laws of planetary motion from his mathematical description of gravity, and then using the same principles to account for the trajectories of comets, the tides, the precession of the equinoxes, and other phenomena, Newton removed the last doubts about the validity of the heliocentric model of the cosmos. This work also demonstrated that the motion of objects on Earth and of celestial bodies could be described by the same principles. His prediction that the Earth should be shaped as an oblate spheroid was later vindicated by the measurements of Maupertuis, La Condamine, and others, which helped convince most Continental European scientists of the superiority of Newtonian mechanics over the earlier system of Descartes.
Newton also built the first practical reflecting telescope and developed a theory of colour based on the observation that a prism decomposes white light into the many colours of the visible spectrum. He formulated an empirical law of cooling, studied the speed of sound, and introduced the notion of a Newtonian fluid. In addition to his work on calculus, as a mathematician Newton contributed to the study of power series, generalised the binomial theorem to non-integer exponents, developed Newton's method for approximating the roots of a function, and classified most of the cubic plane curves.
Newton was a fellow of Trinity College and the second Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge. He was a devout but unorthodox Christian and, unusually for a member of the Cambridge faculty of the day, he refused to take holy orders in the Church of England, perhaps because he privately rejected the doctrine of the Trinity. Beyond his work on the mathematical sciences, Newton dedicated much of his time to the study of biblical chronology and alchemy, but most of his work in those areas remained unpublished until long after his death. In his later life, Newton became president of the Royal Society. He also served the British government as Warden and Master of the