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Sir Isaac Newton   /sər ˈaɪzək nˈutən/   Listen
proper noun
Newton, Isaac Newton, Sir Isaac Newton  n.  A famous English mathematician and natural philosopher, born at Woolsthorpe, near Grantham, Lincolnshire, Dec. 25, 1642 (O. S.): died at Kensington, March 20, 1727. His father, Isaac Newton, was a small freehold farmer. He matriculated at Cambridge (Trinity College) July 8, 1661; was elected to a scholarship April 28, 1664; and graduated in Jan., 1665. At the university he was especially attracted by the study of Descartes's geometry. The method of fluxions is supposed to have first occurred to him in 1665. He was made a fellow of Trinity in 1667, and Lucasian professor at Cambridge in Oct., 1669. He became a fellow of the Royal Society in Jan., 1672. Newton's attention was probably drawn to the subject of gravitation as early as 1665. The story of the fall of the apple was first told by Voltaire, who had it from Mrs. Conduitt, Newton's niece. Kepler had established the laws of the planetary orbits, and from these laws Newton proved that the attraction of the sun upon the planets varies inversely as the squares of their distances. Measuring the actual deflection of the moon's orbit from its tangent, he found it to be identical with the deflection which would be created by the attraction of the earth, diminishing in the ratio of the inverse square of the distance. The hypothesis that the same force acted in each case was thus confirmed. The success of Newton's work really depended on the determination of the length of a degree on the earth's surface by Picard in 1671. The universal law of gravitation was Completely elaborated by 1685. The first book of the "principia" or "Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica" Was presented to the Royal Society, April 28, 1686, and the entire work was published in 1687. In 1689 he sat in Parliament for the University of Cambridge, and at this time was associated with John Locke; in 1701 he was reelected. When his friend Charles Montagu (afterward earl of Halifax) was appointed chancellor of the exchequer, Newton was made warden of the mint, and in 1699 master of the mint. The reformation of English coinage was largely his work. The method of fluxions, which he had discovered, was employed in the calculations for the "Principia," but did not appear until 1693, when it was published by Wallis. It also appeared in 1704 in the first edition of the "Optics." On Feb. 21, 1699, he was elected foreign associate of the French Academy of Sciences. In 1703 he was elected president of the Royal Society, and held the office till his death. Newton was buried in Westminster Abbey on 28 March, eight days after his death. His grave is close to a monument in the Abbey erected in his honor. The Latin inscription reads: Hic depositum est, quod mortale fuit Isaaci Newtoni. This may be translated as "Here lies that which was mortal of Isaac Newton". Before the funeral his body lay in state in the Jerusalem Chamber and his coffin was followed to its grave by most of the Fellows of the Royal Society. The Lord Chancellor, two dukes and three earls were pall bearers. Newton is most commonly known for his conception of the law of universal gravitation, but his other discoveries and inventions in mathematics (e.g. the binomial theorem, differential and integral calculus), optics, mechanics, and astronomy place him at the very forefront of all scientists. His study and understanding of light, the invention of the reflecting telescope (1668), and his revelation in his Principia of the mathematical ordering of the universe are all represented on his monument in Westminster Abbey.,





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Sir isaac newton" Quotes from Famous Books



... immaterial things which appeals to the heart through all ages. Is there a man who would enter unmoved the room in which Shakspeare was born, in which Dante dwelt, or see with indifference the desk at which Luther wrote, the porch beneath which Milton sat, or Sir Isaac Newton's study? So also the possession of a book once their own, still more of the MS. of a work by which great men won enduring fame, written in a great cause, for which they struggled and for which they suffered, seems to efface the lapse of centuries. ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 40, Saturday, August 3, 1850 - A Medium Of Inter-Communication For Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, • Various
... which is so far gratifying that it is by a very eminent man, who signs it; but I chiefly value it on account of the attack upon England for not having raised a monument, [footnote: Lord Brougham was at this time greatly interested, and indeed excited, about a proposed monument to Sir Isaac Newton. His letters frequently allude to it.] and on account, also, of the statement that he was the greatest of all men—which will not be very agreeable to ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... mere child in the hands of "Cornelius,"' that 'he never saw anybody so put down.' These people are all subscribers to the London University, and Sefton swears he overheard Brougham tell them that 'Sir Isaac Newton was nothing compared to some of the present professors,' or something to that effect. I put down all this nonsense because it amused me in the recital, and is excessively characteristic of the man, one of the most remarkable who ever existed. Lady Sefton told me that he went ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... Sir Isaac Newton, in an address on education at Cambridge, playfully referred to the fact that in his boyhood he did not have to prevaricate to escape punishment, his grandmother being always willing to lie for him. His grandmother ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... fame! Fame is an accident. Sir Isaac Newton discovered an apple falling to the ground—a trivial discovery, truly, and one which a million men had made before him—but his parents were influential, and so they tortured that small circumstance into something wonderful, and, lo! the simple world took up the shout ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... is, in this language, an offence "which produces incarceration." To be starved to death is "to sink from inanition into nonentity." Sir Isaac Newton is "the developer of the skies in their embodied movements;" and Mrs. Thrale, when a party of clever people sat silent, is said to have been "provoked by the dullness of a Witurnity that, in the midst ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... himself in Bolt-court, with whom he had the satisfaction of conversing a considerable time, not a fortnight before his death; which happened in St. Martin's-street, during his visit to Dr. Burney, in the house where the great Sir Isaac Newton had lived ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... ballrooms have more to answer for than have moonlit lakes and mountain sunsets. Some day the laws of glamour must be discovered, because they are so important that the world would be wiser now if Sir Isaac Newton had been hit on the head, not by an apple, ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington


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