Sir Isaac Newton – Mathematician and English Physicist

Sir Isaac Newton was a well-known mathematician and English physicist. He made discoveries in the areas of optics, physics, and mathematics. These discoveries led to modern physical optics, modern physics, and calculus. Newton's book, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathmatica, was a very important work in the history of modern science (Westfall).

Newton was born on December 25 of 1642 in Woolsthorpe, England and died on March 20 of 1727 in London England. Two months after Newton was born, his father died. When Newton was three years old his mother left him with his grandmother because she moved away once she remarried. He received his bachelor's degree in 1665 at Trinity College in Cambridge, Egland. He was not able to stay and get his masters degree because the school shut down because of an outbreak of the plague, making him have to stay in Woolsthorpe for eighteen months. During this time is when Newton performed his experiments and had the ideas for his work on gravitation, optics, and calculus. Newton was able to return to Cambridge in 1667 to complete the requirements for his master's degree (Isaac Newton Biography).

Newton's main focus in the field of optics was to unravel the nature of light and its properties. He studied the defraction and refraction of light with prisms and lenses. With one demonstration, a prism with a beam of light into wavelengths of multiple shades, he discovered that white light is composed of component color wavelengths. This same effect leads to the formation of rainbows. Newtons experiments showed that color came from reflection, transmission of light, and selective absorption of light by materials. He discovered that the overlapping of certain color components creates most colors. He invented a new kind of telescope called the reflecting telescope and also wrote a book on optics called Opticks (Discoveries and Inventions)

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