Isaac Newton

Sir Isaac Newton, PRS (25 December 1642 (OS) – 20 March 1727 (OS) / 4 January, 1643 (NS) – 31 March 1727 (NS) was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, philosopher, and alchemist. Recognised as a genius of the highest order, he is widely regarded as the most influential scientist in history. He wrote the Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (published 5 July 16871), where he described universal gravitation and, via his laws of motion, laid the groundwork for classical mechanics. Newton also shares credit with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz for the development of differential calculus. While they both discovered calculus nearly contemporaneously, their work was not a collaboration.

Quotations about Newton

"The Principia is pre-eminent above any other production of human genius." —Pierre-Simon Laplace

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"Taking mathematics from the beginning of the world to the time when Newton lived, what he has done is much the better part." —Gottfried Leibniz

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"All that has been accomplished in mathematics since his day has been a deductive, formal, and mathematical development of mechanics on the basis of Newton's laws." —Ernst Mach

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"Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night:

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God said, Let Newton be! and all was light." —poem, Alexander Pope

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