The Master of Gravity: Read the Full Story of the Iconic Isaac Newton

Today’s story is about a man that we have all known or heard about ever since we were kids. His dedication and hard work have changed the world and given us a set of rules to live by. Let’s talk about the phenomenal Isaac Newton.

Who is Isaac Newton?

Isaac Newton was born on January 4, 1643, in Wales Thorpe, England. He was the only son of a local farmer also named Isaac Newton, who died three months before his son was born. When he was three years old, his mother married a minister and went to live with him, leaving young Newton in the care of his grandmother. This experience left an indelible mark on Newton's sense of insecurity and later sharp defense of his published works and books. 

At the age of twelve, Newton returned to live with his mother and her three new children after her husband died and began studying at the King's School in Grantham Village, where he settled with a local pharmacist and was introduced to the interesting world of chemistry.

The mother withdrew her son from school because she wanted him to become a farmer, but Newton failed miserably due to the monotony and boredom of this work and later returned to school. His creative traits led his uncle, a graduate of Cambridge Divinity, to persuade his mother to send him to university in 1661.

When Newton entered Cambridge, the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century was at its height. As the astronomers Nicolaus Copernicus and Johann Kepler's heliocentric theories were later refined by Galileo and had become known in all European academic circles, the philosopher René Descartes began to develop a new, complex content of nature.

Until that time, Cambridge, like other European universities, had adopted Aristotle's philosophy based on the geocentrism of the universe, which deals with nature in qualitative rather than quantitative terms.

During his first three years at Cambridge University, Newton studied the basic curriculum but was interested in advanced science as he spent his spare time reading the books of the philosophers of his day and taking notes that later showed that Newton had come up with a new definition of nature that framed the scientific revolution.

Newton’s Greatest Achievements:

Although Newton did not graduate with honors from the university, his efforts were rewarded with the title of researcher and financial support for his research for four years. Unfortunately, the outbreak of the plague in Europe in 1665 and its arrival in Cambridge forced the university to close as Newton returned to his village to continue his private studies. During the eighteen months of dropping out of university, he came up with the method of infinitesimal calculations, which laid the foundation for his theory of light and color, constituted an important advance in the laws of planetary motion, and led him to publish his most famous book, "Principia" in 1687. During this period, Newton tested his main inspiration in the theory of gravity, an accident. Apple fall.

When the threat of the plague subsided in 1667, Newton returned to his university and was able to obtain a master's degree in 1669 before he was twenty-seven. During this time, he read Nicholas Mercator's book on methods for dealing with infinite strings, wrote his thesis explaining more extensive results, and shared it with his friend and supervisor Isaac Barrow.

During a presentation to the British mathematician John Collins in June of 1669, Barrow introduced Newton by saying: "Mr. Newton... is very young, but he is a genius and a genius in these matters."

This work drew the attention of the British mathematician community to Newton, and soon afterward Isaac Barrow resigned from his academic position at Cambridge University to be replaced by Newton.

As a professor, Newton stopped teaching regularly but continued to give annual lectures on his work on optics, which relied, in part, on making use of the telescope he designed in 1668, which is considered his first major scientific achievement and helped him greatly in proving his theory about light and color. He published these notes in 1672 which later became part of his Optics, a treatise on the reflection, refraction, discharge, and colors of light.

However, not all members of the Royal Academy were enthusiastic about Newton's discoveries in optics, including the scientist Robert Hooke, who had a set of achievements in several fields, especially mechanics and optics. He saw that light is composed of waves, contrary to what Newton published in his research paper about white light being composed of particles of all colors of the spectrum, which prompted Hooke to attack Newton and his method of research and results harshly.

Robert Hooke was not the only one who expressed objections to the results of Newton's research in optics. He was shared by the famous Dutch scientist Christian Heijn as well as some French scientists, but Hooke's criticisms remained the strongest and most influential due to his direct association with the royal scientific community.

The quarrel between the two scholars lasted for several years until 1678 when Newton suffered a severe nervous breakdown, followed a year later by the death of his mother, which put him in social isolation for six years. During his isolation, Newton returned to the study of gravity and its impact on the orbits of the planets, and one of the ideas of his rival, Hawk, was the one who guided him to the right path that might explain the gravity between planets and its effect on the shape of the orbits so that they take an oval shape.

In 1687, after 18 months of intense work, Newton published his Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, later known as Principia. It was considered the most influential book on physics, as it contained information covering almost all aspects of physics except for energy.

The book provides an accurate quantitative description of objects in motion through three main laws:

• In the absence of an external force, a body at rest will remain at rest.
• Force is equal to mass and acceleration, and the change in motion is proportional to the applied force.
• For every action there is a reaction of equal intensity and opposite direction.

These laws not only help explain the elliptical orbits of the planets, but also explain almost every movement in the universe, such as how the planets stay within their elliptical orbits due to the force of attraction of the sun and how the moons revolve around their planets and comets around the sun. It also allowed Newton to calculate the mass of each planet, the surface area of ​​the Earth at the poles, and the bulge of the equator, and how the gravity of the Sun and Moon affects Earth's tides. According to Newton's calculations, gravity is what keeps the universe in balance.

With the publication of the first edition of Principia, Hooke claimed that Newton stole his ideas, but this claim was not true, as most scientists knew that Hooke had never proven the validity of his ideas. However, Newton was angry at the accusation and defended fiercely, and Hooke continued his hostility, and for his knowledge That Newton would be elected head of the Royal Scientific Society refused to retire and relinquish his position until he died in 1703.

Principia raised Newton's global standing and changed his interests as he began to find himself in other things. He led the resistance against King James II and was elected to represent Cambridge in Parliament. Despite this, many scientists on the continent continued to study mechanics according to the ancient view of Aristotle, except for a group of young scientists, including Newton's friend, who was met in London by the Swiss mathematician Nicolas de Douyer.

In 1693, Newton suffered a nervous breakdown again, and it was difficult to pinpoint the direct cause despite the many reasons proposed for this, including his disappointment at not being appointed to higher positions by the Kings of England, the loss of his friendship with de Douyer, exhaustion from work pressure, and even chronic intoxication. With mercury as a result of decades of chemical experiments, his letters to his friends were muddled and full of accusations of treason and conspiracy against him.

Newton quickly recovered and apologized to his friends and continued his work and research, but this time in religious matters, being one of the topics that occupied Britain in the seventeenth century. In 1699, Newton took over the position of governor of the central bank, where he re-minted the currency and punished counterfeiters and transferred the pound sterling from the standard silver to gold.

In 1703, Newton was elected head of the Royal Scientific Society, and in 1705, the Queen of England Anne knighted him (Sir), which gave him power and influence that he used in an authoritarian way against other scientists, ignoring the idea that science is a cooperative process. In 1705, the German scientist Gottfried Leibniz claimed that Newton stole his research on infinitesimal arithmetic, and to show the truth of the claim, the royal society formed a committee that Newton, under his presidency of the society, could control the appointment of its members and predictably, the decisions of the committee were in favor of Newton.

Newton’s Personal Life:

Newton lived his last years on a Cranberry farm with his niece, where he was one of the most famous people in Europe thanks to his scientific discoveries. Regardless of his fame, Newton's personal life wasn't perfect, as he never married and didn't have many friends.

At the age of 80, he was suffering from digestive problems that forced him to change his diet. In March 1727, he suffered from severe abdominal pains that put him into a coma, after which he died on March 31 of the same year.

Finally:

Perseverance is the key to success. Newton never paid attention to anything else but his goals and dreams, he never listened to his haters, he just kept on going hoping for the best.