Sir Isaac Newton is considered as one of the greatest scientists and mathematicians of all time. He was born on the Christmas morning of 1642 at Woolsthorpe in Lincolnshire. It was also the year in which the famous scientist Galileo died.
At the age of twelve Newton was sent to school. When he was eighteen, he went to Trinity College at the Cambridge University. There he showed his brilliance in mathematics. In 1669 he became Professor of mathematics in the same college.
Newton was very fond of making mechanical toys in his childhood. It is said that one day while sitting in a garden, he saw an apple falling to the ground. He began to wonder: “Why did the apple fall towards the ground? Why did not it go towards the sky?” Such questions puzzled him. He worked on this problem and finally gave his famous ‘Law of Universal Gravitation’. According to this law, everybody in this universe attracts every other body with a force which is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. He established the fact that the earth attracts all objects towards its centre. That is why anything thrown upwards falls back to the earth.
Great scientist as he was, he solved many mysteries of the nature. He showed that the sunlight which appears white is in reality made up of seven colours. He could split these seven colours with the help of a prism. He also showed that the mixture of these seven colours produces white light. He also built the first reflecting telescope. His work on light and colour was published in 1704 in a book called Optics. He did monumental work in the field of mathematics. He gave the famous Laws of motion. He invented calculus. Newton’s discoveries were published in his book called Principia. It is one of the most important books of science ever published. On account of these researches Newton is called the ‘Father of Physics’.
In 1689 Newton was elected as a member of parliament. In 1703 he was elected President of the Royal Society and was re-elected as president every year until his death. When he was 85 years old, he went to London to preside over a meeting of the Royal Society. But on his return he fell ill and he died on March 20, 1727.