Isaac Newton (1642-1727)
Born on Christmas day 1642, and lived 85 years until 1727. His father died two months before he was born, and his step-father was a rector in a church. He was raised by his grandmother. He was a poor student, until he got into a fight with another boy, and out of jealousy decided to show everyone what he could do, and became the top of his class. At 14 Newton was taken out of school to help out on his mother’s farm. He was not a very good farmhand though, always wasting his time doing mathematics.
He eventually was sent back to school and graduated from Cambridge. In 1665 he discovered the binomial theorem, and differential calculus, which he called "fluxions" In 1666 he left Cambridge due to the plague, and he started to think about gravity and the moon, as well as optics and color. He was elected to the Royal society in 1672 (when he was 30) due to his experiments on color. One of Newton’s key conclusions, "that the length of the band of colors a given distance from a spectrum is the same for a prism of any substance provided the angle was the same" was wrong. This is why Newton thought telescopes were of limited use, because chromatic aberration was uncorrectable. Newton later learned of his mistake from others and after that made some telescopes.
In 1692 Newton had an 18-month attack of insomnia and nervousness. In 1696 John Bernoulli challenged mathematicians to solve two problems within six months. Newton did not see the problems until a few months later, but he solved them the next day, transmitting the papers anonymously. They figured out who it was though. In 1703 he became the president of the Royal Society, and did not discover anything else of importance for the last 24 years of his life.
One time an atheist friend of Newton’s came over and saw this scale model of the solar system that Newton had. He remarked at how beautiful it was and asked who made it. Newton nonchalantly replied that no one did; it just made itself. The atheist asked again, got the same answer, and started to get angry. Newton replied, "if you cannot believe something as simple as this model cannot make itself, how can you believe the heavens made themselves?"
Born on Christmas day 1642, and lived 85 years until 1727. His father died two months before he was born, and his step-father was a rector in a church. He was raised by his grandmother. He was a poor student, until he got into a fight with another boy, and out of jealousy decided to show everyone what he could do, and became the top of his class. At 14 Newton was taken out of school to help out on his mother’s farm. He was not a very good farmhand though, always wasting his time doing mathematics.
He eventually was sent back to school and graduated from Cambridge. In 1665 he discovered the binomial theorem, and differential calculus, which he called "fluxions" In 1666 he left Cambridge due to the plague, and he started to think about gravity and the moon, as well as optics and color. He was elected to the Royal society in 1672 (when he was 30) due to his experiments on color. One of Newton’s key conclusions, "that the length of the band of colors a given distance from a spectrum is the same for a prism of any substance provided the angle was the same" was wrong. This is why Newton thought telescopes were of limited use, because chromatic aberration was uncorrectable. Newton later learned of his mistake from others and after that made some telescopes.
In 1692 Newton had an 18-month attack of insomnia and nervousness. In 1696 John Bernoulli challenged mathematicians to solve two problems within six months. Newton did not see the problems until a few months later, but he solved them the next day, transmitting the papers anonymously. They figured out who it was though. In 1703 he became the president of the Royal Society, and did not discover anything else of importance for the last 24 years of his life.
One time an atheist friend of Newton’s came over and saw this scale model of the solar system that Newton had. He remarked at how beautiful it was and asked who made it. Newton nonchalantly replied that no one did; it just made itself. The atheist asked again, got the same answer, and started to get angry. Newton replied, "if you cannot believe something as simple as this model cannot make itself, how can you believe the heavens made themselves?"
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