The great scientist Isaac Newton. Newton Isaac - biography, facts from life, photographs, background information

Isaac Newton was born on January 4, 1643 in the small British village of Woolsthorpe, located in the county of Lincolnshire. A frail boy who left his mother's womb prematurely came into this world on the eve of the English Civil War, shortly after the death of his father and shortly before the celebration of Christmas.

The child was so weak that for a long time he was not even baptized. But still, little Isaac Newton, named after his father, survived and lived a very long life for the seventeenth century - 84 years.

The father of the future brilliant scientist was a small farmer, but quite successful and wealthy. After the death of Newton Sr., his family received several hundred acres of fields and woodland with fertile soil and an impressive sum of 500 pounds sterling.

Isaac's mother, Anna Ayscough, soon remarried and bore her new husband three children. Anna paid more attention to her younger offspring, and Isaac’s grandmother, and then his uncle William Ayscough, was initially involved in raising her first-born.

As a child, Newton was interested in painting and poetry, selflessly inventing a water clock, a windmill, and making paper kites. At the same time, he was still very sickly, and also extremely unsociable: Isaac preferred his own hobbies to fun games with his peers.

When the child was sent to school, his physical weakness and poor communication skills once even caused the boy to be beaten until he fainted. Newton could not endure this humiliation. But, of course, he could not acquire an athletic physical form overnight, so the boy decided to please his self-esteem in a different way.

If before this incident he studied rather poorly and was clearly not the teachers’ favorite, then after that he began to seriously stand out in terms of academic performance among his classmates. Gradually, he became a better student, and also became even more seriously interested in technology, mathematics and amazing, inexplicable natural phenomena than before.

When Isaac turned 16, his mother took him back to the estate and tried to entrust some of the responsibilities of running the household to the older eldest son (Anna Ayscough’s second husband had also died by that time). However, the guy did nothing but construct ingenious mechanisms, “swallow” numerous books and write poetry.

The young man's school teacher, Mr. Stokes, as well as his uncle William Ayscough and his acquaintance Humphrey Babington (part-time member of Trinity College Cambridge) from Grantham, where the future world-famous scientist attended school, persuaded Anna Ayscough to allow her gifted son to continue his studies. As a result of collective persuasion, Isaac completed his studies at school in 1661, after which he successfully passed the entrance exams to Cambridge University.

Beginning of a scientific career

As a student, Newton had the status of "sizar". This meant that he did not pay for his education, but he had to perform various tasks at the university, or provide services to wealthier students. Isaac bravely withstood this test, although he still extremely disliked feeling oppressed, was unsociable and did not know how to make friends.

At that time, philosophy and natural science were taught in the world-famous Cambridge, although at that time the world had already been shown the discoveries of Galileo, the atomic theory of Gassendi, the bold works of Copernicus, Kepler and other outstanding scientists. Isaac Newton greedily absorbed all the possible information on mathematics, astronomy, optics, phonetics and even music theory that he could find. At the same time, he often forgot about food and sleep.

The researcher began his independent scientific activity in 1664, compiling a list of 45 problems in human life and nature that had not yet been solved. At the same time, fate brought the student together with the gifted mathematician Isaac Barrow, who began working in the college’s mathematics department. Subsequently, Barrow became his teacher, as well as one of his few friends.

Having become even more interested in mathematics thanks to a gifted teacher, Newton performed the binomial expansion for an arbitrary rational exponent, which became his first brilliant discovery in the mathematical field. That same year, Isaac received his bachelor's degree.

In 1665-1667, when the plague, the Great Fire of London and the extremely costly war with Holland swept through England, Newton settled briefly in Woesthorpe. During these years, he directed his main activity towards the discovery of optical secrets. Trying to figure out how to rid lens telescopes of chromatic aberration, the scientist came to the study of dispersion. The essence of the experiments that Isaac carried out was in an effort to understand the physical nature of light, and many of them are still carried out in educational institutions.

As a result, Newton came to a corpuscular model of light, deciding that it can be considered as a stream of particles that fly out from a certain light source and carry out linear motion to the nearest obstacle. Although such a model cannot lay claim to ultimate objectivity, it nevertheless became one of the foundations of classical physics, without which more modern ideas about physical phenomena would not have appeared.

There has long been a misconception among those who like to collect interesting facts that Newton discovered this key law of classical mechanics after an apple fell on his head. In fact, Isaac systematically walked towards his discovery, which is clear from his numerous notes. The legend of the apple was popularized by the then authoritative philosopher Voltaire.

Scientific fame

At the end of the 1660s, Isaac Newton returned to Cambridge, where he received master's status, his own room to live, and even a group of young students for whom the scientist became a teacher. However, teaching was clearly not the gifted researcher’s forte, and attendance at his lectures was noticeably poor. At the same time, the scientist invented a reflecting telescope, which made him famous and allowed Newton to join the Royal Society of London. Many amazing astronomical discoveries have been made through this device.

In 1687, Newton published perhaps his most important work, a work entitled “Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy.” The researcher had published his works before, but this one was of paramount importance: it became the basis of rational mechanics and all mathematical natural sciences. It contained the well-known law of universal gravitation, the three hitherto known laws of mechanics, without which classical physics is unthinkable, key physical concepts were introduced, and the heliocentric system of Copernicus was not questioned.

In terms of the mathematical and physical level, “Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy” was an order of magnitude higher than the research of all scientists who worked on this problem before Isaac Newton. There was no unproven metaphysics with lengthy reasoning, unfounded laws and unclear formulations, which was so common in the works of Aristotle and Descartes.

In 1699, while Newton was working in administrative positions, his world system began to be taught at the University of Cambridge.

Personal life

Women, neither then nor over the years, showed much sympathy for Newton, and throughout his life he never married.

The death of the great scientist occurred in 1727, and almost all of London gathered for his funeral.

Newton's laws

• The first law of mechanics: every body is at rest or remains in a state of uniform translational motion until this state is corrected by the application of external forces.
• The second law of mechanics: the change in momentum is proportional to the applied force and occurs in the direction of its influence.
• The third law of mechanics: material points interact with each other along a straight line connecting them, with forces equal in magnitude and opposite in direction.
• Law of Gravity: The force of gravitational attraction between two material points is proportional to the product of their masses multiplied by the gravitational constant, and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between these points.

The English physicist Sir Isaac Newton, whose brief biography is provided here, became famous for his numerous discoveries in the field of physics, mechanics, mathematics, astronomy, and philosophy.

Inspired by the works of Galileo Galilei, René Descartes, Kepler, Euclid and Wallis, Newton made many important discoveries, laws and inventions that modern science still relies on.

When and where was Isaac Newton born?

Isaac Newton House

Sir Isaac Newton (Sir Isaac Newton, years of life 1643 - 1727) was born on December 24, 1642 (January 4, 1643 new style) in the country-state of England, Lincolnshire, in the city of Woolsthorpe.

His mother went into labor prematurely and Isaac was born premature. At birth, the boy turned out to be so physically weak that they were afraid to even baptize him: everyone thought that he would die without living even a couple of years.

However, such a “prophecy” did not prevent him from living to old age and becoming a great scientist.

There is an opinion that Newton was Jewish by nationality, but this is not documented. It is known that he belonged to the English aristocracy.

I. Newton's childhood

The boy never saw his father, also named Isaac (Newton Jr. was named after his father - a tribute to memory), - he died before he was born.

The family later had three more children, whom the mother, Anna Ayscough, gave birth to from her second husband. With their appearance, few people were interested in the fate of Isaac: the boy grew up deprived of love, although the family was considered prosperous.

His uncle William on his mother’s side made more efforts in raising and caring for Newton. The boy's childhood can hardly be called happy.

Already at an early age, Isaac showed his talents as a scientist: he spent a lot of time reading books and loved making things. He was withdrawn and uncommunicative.

Where did Newton study?

In 1655, a 12-year-old boy was sent to school in Grantham. During his training, he lived with a local pharmacist named Clark.

At the educational institution, abilities in the field of physics, mathematics, and astronomy showed, but mother Anna took her son out of school after 4 years.

16-year-old Isaac was supposed to manage the farm, but he didn’t like this arrangement: the young man was more drawn to reading books and inventing.

Thanks to his uncle, schoolmaster Stokes and a teacher from Cambridge University, Isaac was reinstated into the ranks of the school's students to continue his educational activities.

In 1661, the guy entered Trinity College, Cambridge University for free education. In 1664 he passed the exams, which transferred him to the status of a student. From this moment on, the young man continues his studies and receives a scholarship. In 1665 he was forced to quit studying due to the closure of the university for quarantine (plague epidemic).

Around this period he created his first inventions. Afterwards, in 1667, the young man was reinstated as a student and continued to gnaw on the granite of science.

A significant role in Isaac Newton's passion for the exact sciences is played by his mathematics teacher Isaac Barrow.

It is curious that in 1668 the mathematical physicist received the title of master and graduated from the university, and almost immediately began giving lectures to other students.

What did Newton discover?

The scientist’s discoveries are used in educational literature: both in school and university, and in a wide variety of disciplines (mathematics, physics, astronomy).

His main ideas were new for that century:

1. His most important and significant discoveries were made between 1665 and 1667, during the bubonic plague in London. The University of Cambridge was temporarily closed and its teaching staff disbanded due to the raging infection. The 18-year-old student left for his homeland, where he discovered the law of universal gravitation, and also conducted various experiments with spectral colors and optics.
2. His discoveries in mathematics include third-order algebraic curves, binomial expansion, and methods for solving differential equations. Differential and integral calculus were developed almost at the same time as Leibniz, independently of each other.
3. In the field of classical mechanics, he created an axiomatic basis, as well as such a science as dynamics.
4. It is impossible not to mention the three laws, where their name “Newton’s laws” comes from: the first, second and third.
5. The foundation was laid for further research in astronomy, including celestial mechanics.

Philosophical significance of Newton's discoveries

The physicist worked on his discoveries and inventions from both a scientific and religious point of view.

He noted that he wrote his book “Principles” not in order to “belittle the Creator,” but still emphasized his power. The scientist believed that the world was “quite independent.”

He was a supporter of Newtonian philosophy.

Books by Isaac Newton

Newton's published books during his lifetime:

1. "Method of differences".
2. "Enumeration of lines of third order."
3. "Mathematical principles of natural philosophy."
4. "Optics or a treatise on the reflections, refractions, bendings and colors of light."
5. "A New Theory of Light and Colors."
6. "On the quadrature of curves."
7. "Motion of bodies in orbit."
8. "Universal Arithmetic".
9. "Analysis using equations with an infinite number of terms."

1. "Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms" .
2. "The World System".
3. "Method of fluxions ».
4. Lectures on optics.
5. Notes on the book of the prophet Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John.
6. "Brief Chronicle".
7. "A Historical Tracing of Two Notable Corruptions of Holy Scripture."

Newton's inventions

He began taking his first steps in invention as a child, as mentioned above.

In 1667, all the university teachers were amazed by the telescope he created, which was invented by the future scientist: it was a breakthrough in the field of optics.

In 1705, the Royal Society awarded Isaac a knighthood for his contributions to science. Now he was called Sir Isaac Newton, he had his own coat of arms and a not very reliable pedigree.

His inventions also include:

1. A water clock powered by the rotation of a wooden block, which in turn vibrates from falling drops of water.
2. A reflector, which was a telescope with a concave lens. The device gave impetus to research into the night sky. It was also used by sailors for navigation on the high seas.
3. Windmill.
4. Scooter.

Personal life of Isaac Newton

According to contemporaries, Newton’s day began and ended with books: he spent so much time reading them that he often forgot to even eat.

The famous scientist had no personal life at all. Isaac was never married; according to rumors, he even remained a virgin.

When did Sir Isaac Newton die and where is he buried?

Isaac Newton died on March 20 (March 31, 1727 - new style date) in Kensington, UK. Two years before his death, the physicist began to have health problems. He died in his sleep. His grave is in Westminster Abbey.

A few not so popular facts:

1. An apple did not fall on Newton's head - this is a myth invented by Voltaire. But the scientist himself really sat under the tree. Now it is a monument.
2. As a child, Isaac was very lonely, as he was all his life. Having lost her father early, her mother focused entirely on her new marriage and three new children, who were quickly left without a father.
3. At the age of 16, his mother took her son out of school, where he began to show extraordinary abilities at an early age, so that he began managing the farm. The school teacher, his uncle and another acquaintance, a member of Cambridge College, insisted on the boy returning to school, from which he successfully graduated and entered the university.
4. According to the recollections of classmates and teachers, Isaac spent most of his time reading books, forgetting even to eat and sleep - this was the life he most desired.
5. Isaac was the keeper of the British Mint.
6. After the death of the scientist, his autobiography was released.

Conclusion

Sir Isaac Newton's contribution to science is truly enormous, and it is quite difficult to underestimate his contribution. His discoveries to this day are the foundations of modern science as a whole, and his laws are studied in school and other educational institutions.

Isaac Newton's short biography is outlined in this article.

Isaac Newton short biography

Isaac Newton- English mathematician, astronomer, physicist, mechanic, who laid the foundations of classical mechanics. He explained the movement of celestial bodies - the planets around the Sun and the Moon around the Earth. His most famous discovery was the law of universal gravitation

Was born December 25, 1642 years in a farming family in the town of Woolsthorpe near Grantham. His father died before he was born. From the age of 12 he studied at Grantham School. At that time he lived in the house of the pharmacist Clark, which may have awakened in him a craving for chemical sciences

1661 entered Trinity College, Cambridge University as a subsizer. After graduating from college in 1665, Newton received a bachelor's degree. 1665–67, during the plague, was in his native village of Woolsthorpe; These years were the most productive in Newton's scientific work.

In 1665-1667, Newton developed ideas that led him to the creation of differential and integral calculus, the invention of a reflecting telescope (made by himself in 1668), and the discovery of the law of universal gravitation. Here he conducted experiments on the decomposition (dispersion) of light. It was then that Newton outlined a program for further scientific growth

In 1668 he successfully defended his master's degree and became a senior member of Trinity College.

In 1889 receives one of the departments at Cambridge University: the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics.

In 1671, Newton built his second reflecting telescope, larger and of better quality than the first. The demonstration of the telescope made a strong impression on his contemporaries, and soon after (in January 1672) Newton was elected a member of the Royal Society of London - the English Academy of Sciences.

Also in 1672, Newton submitted to the Royal Society of London his research on a new theory of light and colors, which caused heated controversy with Robert Hooke. Newton had ideas about monochromatic light rays and the periodicity of their properties, substantiated by the finest experiments. In 1687, he published his grandiose work “Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy” (“Principles”).

In 1696, Newton was appointed Warden of the Mint by Royal Decree. His vigorous reform is quickly restoring confidence in the UK monetary system. 1703 - Newton's election as president of the Royal Society, which he ruled for 20 years. 1703 - Queen Anne knighted Newton for scientific merits. In the last years of his life, he devoted a lot of time to theology and ancient and biblical history.

One of the first scientists, rightfully recognized as a genius, Isaac Newton made fundamental discoveries in mathematics and established fundamental laws in the fields of astronomy and physics. The newton, the unit of force in the International System of Units, is named after the great scientist.

Isaac Newton (1642-1727) was born in East Anglia into the family of a small farmer who died shortly before the birth of his son. The grandmother was involved in raising the future scientist. He attended a local school and then entered Trinity College, Cambridge University. In 1665, Newton received his bachelor's degree, but was forced to remain in the village due to the plague then raging in London. He focused on mathematics and developed the principles of derivatives, which led to the development of differential calculus. In 1667, Newton became a teacher at Trinity College and in 1669 received the position of professor of mathematics. He then became interested in the movement of bodies, wondering what makes them start and stop moving. As a result, Newton's three laws of motion of bodies arose. The effect of these laws can be observed while playing billiards.

The next science to which Newton made a huge contribution was astronomy. According to a common legend, a scientist was sitting in the garden and saw an apple falling. Why did it fall? Newton concluded that the apple was pulled toward the Earth by a force we now call gravity. In addition, he realized that every body behaves as if its mass was concentrated in one place (now called the center of gravity). Using the laws of motion he discovered, Newton concluded that the force of gravity acts on all bodies in the Universe; It is she who makes the Moon revolve around the Earth, and the Earth around the Sun. He derived the formula for the universal law of universal gravitation, according to which the force of attraction between two bodies - two billiard balls and even two stars - is equal to the product of their masses and is inversely proportional to the distance between them.

The English scientist Robert Hooke also derived the law of gravity in 1678 and published his idea a few years later. This led to a great quarrel between the great scientists.

Isaac Newton's "Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy" is one of the most important scientific books of all time. It expounds fundamental theories in the fields of astronomy, mathematics and physics.

In the branch of physics now called optics, Newton's main works were devoted to the nature of light. By passing a narrow beam of sunlight through a glass prism, Newton split the light into a multicolor spectrum, the sequence of colors of which was the same as in the spectrum of the rainbow. He proved that daylight consists of a series of colors. (Today we would say that this light was made up of many different wavelengths.) Telescopes of the time produced images surrounded by a spectrum of colors because poor quality lenses focused different colors in different places. The scientist solved this problem by using mirrors instead of lenses, and in 1668 he built one of the first reflecting telescopes, for which he made the mirrors with his own hands.

Newton was convinced that light was a “stream” of tiny particles (“corpuscles”). This theory was soon questioned by Christiaan Huygens and other scientists who believed that light travels in the form of waves. The debate continued until the 20th century, when physicists finally came to the conclusion that light has the properties of both a particle and a wave; but for this it was necessary to create quantum theory.

In 1703, Newton was elected president of the Royal Society of London, and two years later he was ennobled and showered with honors. The last years of his life he was engaged in the preparation of reprints of “Principles” and “Optics”. Isaac Newton was buried in Westminster Abbey.

According to legend, Newton formulated his law of universal gravitation while sitting in a garden and watching an apple fall.

>What did Isaac Newton discover?

Isaac Newton's discoveries– laws and physics from one of the greatest geniuses. Study the law of universal gravitation, the three laws of motion, gravity, the shape of the Earth.

Isaac Newton(1642-1727) is remembered by us as a philosopher, scientist and mathematician. He did a lot for his time and actively participated in the scientific revolution. Interestingly, his views, Newton's laws and physics would prevail for another 300 years after his death. In fact, we have before us the creator of classical physics.

Subsequently, the word “Newtonian” will be inserted into all statements related to his theories. Isaac Newton is considered one of the greatest geniuses and most influential scientists, whose work spanned many scientific fields. But what do we owe to him and what discoveries did he make?

Three laws of motion

Let's start with his famous work “Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy” (1687), which revealed the foundations of classical mechanics. We are talking about three laws of motion, derived from the laws of planetary motion put forward by Johannes Kepler.

The first law is inertia: an object at rest will remain at rest unless acted upon by a force that is unbalanced. A body in motion will continue to move at its original speed and in the same direction unless it encounters an unbalanced force.

Second: acceleration occurs when force affects mass. The greater the mass, the more force required.

Third: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Universal gravity

Newton is to be thanked for the law of universal gravitation. He deduced that each point of mass attracts another by a force directed along a line intersecting both points (F = G frac(m_1 m_2)(r^2)).

These three postulates of gravity will help him measure the trajectories of comets, tides, equinoxes and other phenomena. His arguments crushed the last doubts regarding the heliocentric model and the scientific world accepted the fact that the Earth does not act as the universal center.

Everyone knows that Newton came to his conclusions about gravity thanks to the incident of an apple falling on his head. Many people think that this is just a comic retelling, and the scientist developed the formula gradually. But the entries in Newton’s diary and the retellings of his contemporaries speak in favor of the apple breakthrough.

Shape of the Earth

Isaac Newton believed that our planet Earth formed as an oblate spheroid. Later the guess would be confirmed, but in his time it was important information that helped transfer most of the scientific world from the Cartesian system to Newtonian mechanics.

In the mathematical field, he generalized the binomial theorem, studied power series, developed his own method for approximating the roots of a function, and divided most curved cubic planes into classes. He also shared his developments with Gottfried Leibniz.

His discoveries were breakthroughs in physics, mathematics and astronomy, helping to understand the structure of space using formulas.

Optics

In 1666, he delved deeper into optics. It all started with studying the properties of light, which he measured through a prism. In 1670-1672. studied the refraction of light, showing how a multi-colored spectrum is rearranged into a single white light using a lens and a second prism.

As a result, Newton realized that color is formed due to the interaction of objects that were originally colored. In addition, I noticed that the lens of any instrument suffers from light scattering (chromatic aberration). He managed to solve the problems using a telescope with a mirror. His invention is considered the first model of a reflecting telescope.

Besides…

He is also credited with formulating the empirical law of cooling and studying the speed of sound. From his suggestion, the term “Newtonian fluid” appeared - a description of any fluid where viscous stresses are linearly proportional to the rate of its transformation.

Newton devoted a large amount of time to researching not only scientific postulates, but also biblical chronology and introduced himself into alchemy. However, many works appeared only after the death of the scientist. So Isaac Newton is remembered not only as a talented physicist, but also as a philosopher.

What do we owe to Isaac Newton? His ideas were breakthrough not only for that time, but also served as starting points for all subsequent scientists. It prepared fertile ground for new discoveries and inspired exploration of this world. It is not surprising that Isaac Newton had followers who developed his ideas and theories. If you are interested in learning more, the site has a biography of Isaac Newton, which presents the date of birth and death (according to the new and old style), the most important discoveries, as well as interesting facts about the greatest physicist.