Isaac Newton is one of the founders of modern science. What discoveries did Newton make?

Date of birth: January 4, 1643
Date of death: March 31, 1727
Birthplace: Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, UK

Isaac Newton- known as a physicist and mathematician, as well as Isaac Newton genius mechanic. He left his mark on history as the creator of the foundations of physics.

The famous scientist was born in 1643. His father was a wealthy farmer, but he did not have time to see the birth of his son. After the death of her husband, Isaac's mother remarried and did not raise her son.

Newton was a very sickly boy, and his relatives thought that he would die, but everything turned out differently. He was raised by his mother's brother.

Already at school, Newton showed many talents that were noted by teachers. His relatives tried to raise a squatter out of him, but their attempts were unsuccessful. Mother allowed Isaac to finish school under pressure from teachers, and he continued his education at a college in Cambridge.

Even as a student, Newton tried to explain all the phenomena occurring in the environment from a scientific point of view. He is fascinated by mathematics, and at the age of 21, Isaac already makes a discovery - he deduces a binomial named after him.

For this discovery, the young man receives a bachelor's degree. In Great Britain in 1665 plague raged. The quarantine in the country lasted two years, and the scientist was forced to go home.

The future scientist was able to return to Cambridge only after the epidemic subsided. After graduating from college, Isaac devoted himself entirely to scientific work. It was during this period that Newton discovered the law of universal gravitation.

Newton is engaged in the study of optics and develops a telescope that allowed sailors to calculate the exact time from the position of the stars. This development allowed the inventor to become an honorary member of the Royal Society. The scientist is in correspondence with Leibniz.

In 1677, a fire broke out in Isaac's dwelling, which destroyed some of the works of this scientist. Newton summarized all his research in a book where he outlined the concepts of mechanics. In the same book, he introduced new quantities in physics, and also formulated the laws of mechanics and much more. The scientist also participated in the public life of the kingdom.

He was elected to the House of Lords, was appointed superintendent of the mint and after a while his manager. In 1703 he was elected President of the Royal Society. Newton is awarded the title of knight.

All his life, Newton actively fought against financial scams and counterfeiters, at the end of his life, he becomes a participant in monetary fraud and loses part of his fortune.

Isaac Newton has no descendants. He worked all the time. But besides this, Newton had an unattractive appearance that repelled women from him. Biographers of the scientist note that in his youth, Isaac was carried away by his peer, Miss Storey, with whom he was friends all his life. The great scientist died in 1727. Buried in Westminster Abbey.

Achievements of Isaac Newton:

Considered the founder of mechanics (a branch of physics)
Opened rings named after him
Founded integral calculus in mathematics
Author of Newton's binomial
Built a reflecting telescope.

Important dates in the biography of Isaac Newton:

1664 - Newton's binomial discovered
1665–1667 -Discovered the law of gravity
1689 - Was elected a parliamentarian
1705 - Received a knighthood

Interesting facts from the life of Isaac Newton:

Newton managed to decompose the rainbow into a seven-color spectrum. The original colors from this spectrum were orange and blue. However, Newton then equated the number of colors in a rainbow with the number of notes in one musical scale.
Trying to prove that people see the surrounding objects in the process of light pressure on the retina, the scientist pressed on the bottom of his own eyeball, so that he almost lost it. Thus he was able to prove his theory. The eye remained intact.
Newton never missed a meeting of Parliament
Isaac was an absent-minded person, and once, instead of dipping an egg into boiling water, he threw a watch into it and noticed it only after two minutes.
Newton predicted the coming of Christ in 2060.

Sir Isaac Newton (December 25, 1642 – March 20, 1727) was the world's most famous English mathematician, physicist and astronomer. He is considered the founder and ancestor of classical physics, since in one of his works - "Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy" - Newton outlined the three laws of mechanics and proved the law of universal gravitation, which helped classical mechanics to move far ahead.

Childhood

Isaac Newton was born on December 25 in the small town of Woolsthorpe, located in the county of Lincolnshire. His father was an average but very successful farmer who did not live to see the birth of his own son and died a couple of months before this event from a severe form of consumption.

It was in honor of his father that the child was named Isaac Newton. So decided the mother, who for a long time mourned the deceased husband and hoped that her son would not repeat his tragic fate.

Despite the fact that Isaac was born at his due date, the boy was very sickly and weak. According to some records, it was because of this that they did not dare to baptize him, but when the child grew a little and got stronger, the baptism nevertheless took place.

There were two versions about the origin of Newton. Previously, bibliographers were sure that his ancestors were the nobles who lived in England in those distant times.

However, the theory was refuted later, when manuscripts were found in one of the local settlements, from which the following conclusion was made: Newton did not have absolutely any aristocratic roots, rather, on the contrary, he came from the poorest part of the peasants.

The manuscripts said that his ancestors worked for wealthy landowners and later, having accumulated a sufficient amount of funds, they bought a small plot of land, becoming yeomen (full landowners). Therefore, by the time Newton's father was born, the position of his ancestors was slightly better than before.

In the winter of 1646, Newton's mother, Anna Ayskow, remarries a widower, and three more children are born. Since the stepfather communicates little with Isaac and practically does not notice him, after a month a similar attitude towards the child can already be discerned in his mother.

She also becomes cold to her own son, which is why the already gloomy and closed boy becomes even more alienated, not only in the family, but also with classmates and friends around him.

In 1653, Isaac's stepfather dies, leaving his entire fortune to his newfound family and children. It would seem that now the mother should begin to devote much more time to the child, but this does not happen. Rather, on the contrary, now in her hands is the entire household of her husband, as well as children who need care. And despite the fact that part of the state still passes to Newton, he, as before, does not receive attention.

Youth

In 1655, Isaac Newton went to the Grantham School, located near his home. Since he has practically no relationship with his mother during this period, he becomes close to the local pharmacist Clark and moves in with him. But he is not allowed to calmly study and make various mechanisms in his free time (by the way, this was Isaac's only passion). Six months later, his mother forcibly takes him out of school, returns him to the estate and tries to transfer some of her own responsibilities for managing the household to him.

She believed that in this way she could not only provide her son with a decent future, but also greatly facilitate her own life. But the attempt turned out to be a failure - the management was not interesting to the young man. On the estate, he only read, invented new mechanisms and tried to compose poems, showing with his whole appearance that he was not going to interfere in the economy. Realizing that there is no need to wait for help from her son, the mother allows him to continue his studies.

In 1661, after graduating from Grantham School, Newton entered Cambridge and successfully passed the entrance exams, after which he was enrolled in Trinity College as a "sizer" (a student who does not pay for his education, but works it out by providing services the institution itself or its more affluent students).

Little is known about Isaac's university education, so it was extremely difficult for scientists to restore this period of his life. It is only known that the unstable political situation had a negative impact on the university: teachers were fired, student payments were delayed, and the educational process was partially absent.

Start of scientific activity

Until 1664, Newton, according to his own notes in his workbooks and personal diary, did not see any benefit and prospects in his university education. However, it was 1664 that became a turning point for him. First, Isaac draws up a list of problems of the world around him, consisting of 45 items (by the way, such lists will appear more than once on the pages of his manuscripts in the future).

Then he meets a new math teacher (and later best friend) Isaac Barrow, thanks to whom he develops a special love for mathematics. At the same time, he makes his first discovery - he creates a binomial expansion for an arbitrary rational exponent, with the help of which he proves the existence of an expansion of a function into an infinite series.

In 1686, Newton created the theory of universal gravitation, which later, thanks to Voltaire, acquired a certain mysterious and slightly humorous character. Isaac was on friendly terms with Voltaire and shared with him almost all theories. One day they were sitting under a tree in the park after dinner, talking about the essence of the universe. And at this very moment, Newton suddenly admits to a friend that the theory of universal gravitation came to him at exactly the same moment - during the rest.

“The afternoon weather was so warm and good that I certainly wanted to go out into the fresh air, under the apple trees. And at that moment, when I was sitting, completely immersed in my thoughts, a large apple fell from one of the branches. And I thought about why all the objects fall vertically down?.

The further scientific activity of Isaac Newton was more than just fruitful. He was in constant correspondence with many famous scientists, mathematicians, astronomers, biologists and physicists. He wrote such works as A New Theory of Light and Colors (1672), Orbital Motion of Bodies (1684), Optics or a Treatise on the Reflections, Refractions, Bendings, and Colors of Light (1704), Enumeration of the Lines of the Third order" (1707), "Analysis by means of equations with an infinite number of terms" (1711), "Method of differences" (1711) and many others.

Isaac Newton - a talented English physicist, a famous mathematician, a famous astronomer and a genius in mechanics, one of the legendary creators of basic, classical physics, an honorary member, and then president of the Royal Society of London.

Biography

Childhood

Father - Isaac Newton, a wealthy farmer who died before the birth of his son. Mother - Anna Ayskou, after the death of her husband remarried and abandoned her son's upbringing. The future scientist was born so painful that his relatives believed that he would not survive, but Isaac lived to a ripe old age. Anna had three more children, but from her second marriage. Isaac was handled exclusively by her brother, William Ayscough.

Education

While studying at a school in Grantham, Newton discovered extraordinary abilities that were noticed by teachers. His mother took him out of school, trying to make him a farmer, but her attempts were in vain. Under pressure from her brother and teachers, Anna allowed Isaac to finish school. After that, he successfully entered Trinity College at the University of Cambridge.

life path

While studying in college, Newton tries to solve from a scientific point of view those phenomena in the world around him that have not been explained. He is seriously interested in mathematics and already at the age of 21 he derives the binomial expansion of an arbitrary rational indicator and receives a bachelor's degree.

In 1665, plague is declared in England. The quarantine lasted two years, and Newton, after leaving college, devoted himself entirely to science. During these years, the famous law of universal gravitation was discovered, with which the legend of an apple that fell on the head of a physicist is associated. When the plague subsided, Isaac returned to Cambridge, where he received his master's degree. Continuing his mathematical research, he becomes a professor of mathematics at the college. During these years, he studied optics and created a reflecting telescope, which gained wide popularity, as it made it possible to calculate more accurate time using celestial bodies and helped sailors in navigation. It was this invention that became for Newton a pass to the Royal Society, of which he was elected an honorary member.

Newton corresponded with Leibniz, arguing with the great minds of that time about the nature of light. In 1677, a fire broke out in Newton's house, destroying part of the physicist's scientific works. In 1679, the scientist's mother died after an illness.

Newton was able to summarize his scientific research in the book "Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy", in which he explained the basic concepts of mechanics, introduced new physical quantities (mass, momentum, external force), formulated the laws of mechanics, drew a conclusion from the law of gravity for Kepler's laws, described parabolic and hyperbolic orbits of celestial bodies and expressed his views on the Copernican heliocentric system.

Isaac Newton also took part in the public life of England: in 1689 he was elected to Parliament. The beginning of the 90s was marked by a serious illness, general overwork and a break in scientific activity.

In 1696 he became the caretaker of the Mint in London, and from 1699 his manager. In this position, Newton did a lot of useful things for the state: he initiated the monetary reform and actively fought against counterfeiters.

In 1703, Newton became president of the Royal Society, by that time already a recognized and respected scientist. He publishes "Optics", becomes a knight, continues his scientific research. Shortly before his death, he becomes a participant in a money scam and loses most of his fortune.

Personal life

Newton left no descendants, since he was never married: he devoted all his free time to science, and his ordinary, gray appearance made him inconspicuous for women. Biographers mention only one sympathy that flashed in Newton's youth: while studying at Grantham, he was in love with Miss Storey, his peer, with whom he maintained warm, friendly relations until the end of his days.

Death

Newton spent his last years in Kensington, where he died in his sleep on March 31, 1727. The scientist was buried in Westminster Abbey.

Newton's main achievements

  • Newton is the founder of mechanics, an important branch of physics.
  • He owns three laws, named after him.
  • Discovered the law of gravity.
  • Decomposed sunlight into a spectrum and back.
  • Became the author of the popular corpuscular theory of light.
  • Discovered "Newton's rings" by studying the interference of light.
  • In mathematics, Newton became the founder of integral calculus.
  • The author of the binomial, which also bears his name.
  • Built a mirror telescope.
  • Explained from a scientific point of view the movement of the Moon around the Earth and the planets around the Sun.

Important dates in Newton's biography

  • 1643 - birth
  • 1655–1661 - teaching at Grantham School
  • 1661 - studying at Trinity College at the University of Cambridge
  • 1664 - discovery of the binomial, bachelor's degree
  • 1665–1667 - "plague years", discovery of the law of universal gravitation
  • 1668 - master's degree
  • 1669 College professor of mathematics
  • 1672 Member of the Royal Society of London
  • 1677 fire at Newton's house
  • 1679 - mother's death
  • 1687 - "The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy"
  • 1689 - Election to Parliament
  • 1691–1693 - sickness
  • 1696 - caretaker of the Mint
  • 1699 - Manager of the Mint
  • 1703 President of the Royal Society of London
  • 1704 - "Optics"
  • 1705 knighthood
  • 1727 - death
  • It was Newton who decomposed the rainbow into seven colors. Moreover, initially he lost sight of orange and blue, but then equalized the number of shades with the number of basic tones in the musical scale.
  • The great scientist was not afraid to experiment on himself. Proving that a person sees the world around him as a result of pressure on the retina of the light, Newton pressed a thin probe on the bottom of his eyeball, almost losing his eye. Fortunately, the eye remained unharmed, and the multi-colored circles that the physicist saw at the same time proved his hypothesis.
  • Newton was respected and was an honorary member of the English House of Lords for many years. He never missed meetings, but he never spoke at them either. As the third year of this social ministry began, Isaac Newton suddenly stood up and asked to speak. Everyone was amazed - dead silence reigned in the ward. And the physicist in a tired voice asked only to close the window.
  • Newton's absent-mindedness can only equal Albert Einstein. One day he decided to boil an egg for himself, but instead he dipped his pocket watch into boiling water. Moreover, the physicist noticed the error only after 2 minutes, when it was necessary to pull out the “egg”.
  • Newton owns one of the prophecies about the second coming of Christ: he called the year 2060.

The whole picture of the world, created by the great English scientist Isaac Newton, still amazes scientists. Newton's merit is that both huge celestial bodies and the smallest grains of sand driven by the wind obey the laws he discovered.

Isaac Newton was born in England on January 4, 1643. At 26, he became a professor of mathematics and physics and taught for 27 years. In the first years of his scientific activity, he became interested in optics, where he made many discoveries. He personally made the first mirror telescope, which magnified 40 times (at that time, a considerable amount).

From 1676, Newton began to study mechanics. The scientist outlined the main discoveries in this area in the monumental work “Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy”. Everything that was known about the simplest forms of motion of matter was told in the Elements. Newton's doctrine of space, mass and force was of great importance for the further development of physics. Only the discoveries of the 20th century, especially those of Einstein, showed the limitations of the laws on which Newton's theory of classical mechanics was built. But despite this, classical mechanics has not lost its practical significance.

Isaac Newton laid out the law of universal gravitation and the three laws of mechanics, which became the basis of classical mechanics. He gave a theory of the motion of celestial bodies, creating the foundations of celestial mechanics. He developed differential and integral calculus, made many discoveries in the science of optics and color theory, developed a number of other mathematical and physical theories. Newton's scientific works were far ahead of the general scientific level of his time, and therefore many of them were obscure to contemporaries. Many of his hypotheses and predictions turned out to be prophetic, for example, the deflection of light in the gravitational field, the phenomenon of light polarization, the interconversion of light and matter, the hypothesis of the Earth being flattened at the poles, etc.

The following words are carved on the grave of the great scientist:

"Here rests
Sir Isaac Newton,
Who by the almost divine power of his mind
first explained
With the help of your mathematical method
The movements and forms of the planets,
The paths of comets, the ebbs and flows of the ocean.
He was the first to explore the diversity of light rays
And the peculiarities of colors resulting from this,
Until that time, no one even suspected.
Diligent, shrewd and faithful interpreter
Nature, antiquities and sacred writings,
He glorified the Almighty Creator in his teaching.
He proved the simplicity required by the Gospel with his own life.
Let mortals rejoice that in their midst
Such an adornment of the human race lived.

Isaac Newton was born into a farmer's family in the village of Wilsthorpe, Lincolnshire, in the east of England, off the coast of the North Sea. After successfully graduating from school in the city of Grantham, the young man entered Trinity College, Cambridge University. Among the famous graduates of the college are the philosopher Francis Bacon, Lord Byron, the writer Vladimir Nabokov, the kings of England Edward VII and George VI, Prince Charles of Wales. Interestingly, Newton became a bachelor in 1664, having already made his first discovery. With the outbreak of the plague, the young scientist went home, but in 1667 he returned to Cambridge, and in 1668 he became a master of Trinity College. The following year, the 26-year-old Newton became professor of mathematics and optics, succeeding his teacher Barrow, who was appointed royal chaplain. In 1696, King William III of Orange appointed Newton superintendent of the Mint, and three years later, manager. In this position, the scientist actively fought against counterfeiters and carried out several reforms that, decades later, led to an increase in the country's welfare. In 1714, Newton wrote an article "Observations on the Value of Gold and Silver", thereby summarizing his experience of financial regulation in public office.
Fact
Isaac Newton never married.

14 major discoveries of Isaac Newton

1. Binomial Newton. Newton made his first mathematical discovery at the age of 21. As a student, he deduced the binomial formula. Newton's binomial is a formula for expanding into a polynomial of an arbitrary natural degree of a binomial (a + b) to the degree n. Everyone today knows the formula for the square of the sum a + b, but in order not to make a mistake with the determination of the coefficients when the exponent increases, Newton's binomial formula is used. Through this discovery, the scientist came to his other important discovery - the expansion of a function into an infinite series, later called the Newton-Leibniz formula.
2. Algebraic curve of the 3rd order. Newton proved that for any cube (algebraic curve) it is possible to choose a coordinate system in which it will have one of the types indicated by him, and also divided the curves into classes, genera and types.
3. Differential and integral calculus. Newton's main analytical achievement was the expansion of all possible functions into power series. In addition, he created a table of antiderivatives (integrals), which entered almost unchanged into all modern textbooks of mathematical analysis. The invention allowed the scientist, according to him, to compare the areas of any figures "in half a quarter of an hour."
4. Newton's method. Newton's algorithm (also known as the tangent method) is an iterative numerical method for finding the root (zero) of a given function.

5. Color theory. At 22, in the words of the scientist himself, he "received the theory of colors." It was Newton who first divided the continuous spectrum into seven colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. The nature of color and experiments with the decomposition of white into 7 component colors, described in Newton's Optics, formed the basis for the development of modern optics.

6. The law of universal gravitation. In 1686, Newton discovered the law of universal gravitation. The idea of ​​gravitational force was expressed earlier (for example, by Epicurus and Descartes), but before Newton, no one was able to mathematically connect the law of gravitation (a force proportional to the square of distance) and the laws of planetary motion (that is, Kepler's laws). Newton was the first to guess that gravity acts between any two bodies in the Universe, that the motion of a falling apple and the rotation of the Moon around the Earth are controlled by the same force. Thus, Newton's discovery formed the basis of another science - celestial mechanics.

7. Newton's first law: Law of inertia. The first of the three laws underlying classical mechanics. Inertia is the property of a body to keep its speed of motion unchanged in magnitude and direction when no forces act on it.

8. Newton's second law: The differential law of motion. The law describes the relationship between the force applied to the body (material point) and the acceleration following this.

9. Newton's third law. The law describes how two material points interact and states that the force of action is opposite in direction to the force of interaction. In addition, force is always the result of the interaction of bodies. And no matter how bodies interact with each other through forces, they cannot change their total momentum: hence follows the Law of Conservation of Momentum. Dynamics based on Newton's laws is called classical dynamics and describes the movements of objects with velocities ranging from fractions of millimeters per second to kilometers per second.

10. Reflecting telescope. The optical telescope, where a mirror is used as a light-collecting element, despite its small size, gave a high-quality 40-fold magnification. Thanks to his invention in 1668, Newton gained fame and became a member of the Royal Society. Later, improved reflectors became the main tools of astronomers, with their help, in particular, the planet Uranus was discovered.
11. Mass. Mass as a scientific term was introduced by Newton as a measure of the amount of matter: before that, natural scientists operated with the concept of weight.
12. Newton's pendulum. A mechanical system of several balls suspended on threads in the same plane, oscillating in this plane and hitting each other, was invented to demonstrate the transformation of energy of various types into each other: kinetic into potential or vice versa. The invention went down in history as "Newton's Cradle".
13. Interpolation formulas. Computational mathematics formulas are used to find intermediate values ​​of a quantity given a discrete (discontinuous) set of known values.
14. "Universal Arithmetic". In 1707, Newton published a monograph on algebra, and thus made a great contribution to the development of this branch of mathematics. Among the discoveries of Newton's work: one of the first formulations of the fundamental theorem of algebra and a generalization of Descartes' theorem.

One of Newton's most famous philosophical sayings:

In philosophy, there can be no sovereign other than truth... We must erect monuments of gold to Kepler, Galileo, Descartes and write on each: "Plato is a friend, Aristotle is a friend, but the main friend is truth."