Isaac Newton was a great English scientist. He was born in 1642 in a
little village in Lincolnshire: Newton’s father was a farmer and died
before his son’s birth. When Newton was 15, his uncle removed him from
school because he wanted to make a farmer of him. But a young Isaac was a
bad farmer and his uncle sent him to the University of Cambridge. After
graduation from the University he became a professor of Mathematics and
lectured at Cambridge for more than 30 years.
In 1665 the great plague broke in England and Cambridge was
closed — Newton had to return home for eighteen months. It was the most
important period in his life when he made his three great discoveries—
those of the differential calculuses, of the nature of white light and
of the law of gravitation. He advanced an idea that light consisted of
small particles — corpuscles (today the scientists call them photons).
Later on he, however, came to the conclusion that light had a dual
nature, namely, it was a combination of the corpuscles and the ethereal
waves. Newton was also interested in the problem of what was the cause
of the motion of the planets. He came to the conclusion that the force
that kept the planets in the orbits round the Sun was the same force
that caused objects to fall onto the ground, namely, the force of
gravity. A popular legend says that he made this discovery while
observing the fall of an apple from a tree in his garden. But only in
1684 Newton published his famous book the "Principia” in which he
explained the movement of the planets and laid down the law of universal
gravitation. This book made a great contribution to Physics and
Mathematics: the publication of the "Principia” was compared to a
sunrise, but Newton himself was always modest.
Newton was not only theorist but a great inventor, too: he
invented a mirror telescope. The demonstration of the mirror telescope
made a great impression on the contemporaries and in 1672 Newton was
elected a member of the Royal Scientific Society. In 1695 Newton was
appointed an inspector at the Royal Mint; there he was in charge of
coining new English money. In 1703 Newton was elected a President of the
Royal Scientific Society. For the last time he attended its meeting in
February, 1727. On March 20, the same year he died and was buried in
Westminster Abbey. There is a monument to Newton in Trinity College at
Cambridge with the inscription: "Newton Who Surpassed All Men of
Science”.
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