Newton, Sir Isaac

Newton, Sir Isaac (1642–1727). Newton was born near Grantham after his father's death, on Christmas Day. He went to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1661; during the plague year, 1665–6, the undergraduates were sent home, and he is supposed to have thought of the nature of light, differential calculus, and the theory of gravity. In 1669 he was appointed to the Lucasian chair of mathematics at Cambridge, where he divided his time between mathematical sciences, alchemy, and biblical study. In 1672 his first paper went to the Royal Society, containing his ‘crucial experiment’ to prove that white light is a mixture of all the colours. Because he believed that refraction inevitably produced coloured fringes, he advocated reflecting telescopes, and made one. In 1684 Edmond Halley came to see him after discussing planetary orbits with Hooke and Christopher Wren, and found that Newton had worked out the laws of motion and of gravity. With Halley as midwife, Newton's Principia was published in 1687. It began by setting out the nature of space, time, and motion; then came the laws of mechanics, a proof that whirlpools of ether cannot explain the phenomena, and, finally, the demonstration that gravity and inertia fitted the facts. He represented the university in Parliament, and in 1696 was appointed warden (later master) of the mint in London, where he supervised recoinage. By the time of his death, he was regarded with awe, and came to stand as the symbol of enlightenment.