Sir Issac Newton (1642-1727)

Mathematician

Physicist

Astrologer

Alchemist

Knight

The year is 1642;What can we describe?

Free fall and Projectile Motion

Planetary Orbits

Inclined Planes, Levers, Simple Machines

The Tides

A Few Others (Buoyancy, Optics, etc.)

What can we fully explain?

Essentially, NOTHING!!

Well, maybe it’s not quite that bad . . .

Two properties: Inertia and acceleration

First attempt: Rene Descartes; had lots of good math, mostly lousy physics

Newton: the early years

Born on Christmas Eve, father died before birth, Mother moved away, raised by grandparents

Newton tries to run the family farm – inept

Enters Trinity college (Cambridge) in 1661“Work study student” in the mess hall.

Making his bones: the binomial theorem

Some calculations very hard to do, in particular, division and roots.

Approximation procedure: (1 + x)N ≈ 1 + Nx for small x

√(1.02) = (1 + 0.02)0.5 ≈ 1 + .5(.02) = 1.01 calculator says 1.00995

Made him relatively famous

A great year

1665 Plague hits London; Newton moves to farm for a year and a half. Is bored; invents:

DynamicsCalculusOpticsDiscovers Gravity

Publish or Perish?

Considered his results “self–evident”, so didn’t publish.

1667: Cambridge Fellow; 1669: Lucasian chair

Lectured on Optics in the 1670’s; opposed by Robert Hooke (of Hooke’s law fame)

Hooke is Senior member of Royal Society; Newton refused membership

The Principia

1679: Hooke asks for the orbit of a planet subject to Inverse Square Law

1684: Edmund Halley (of comet fame) asks Newton Hooke’s question; Newton says he solved it years before: elliptical orbits

Halley convinces Newton to publish: 1687: The Principia (Hooke charges plagiarism)

A few finishing touches

1693: Warden of Mint; 1695: Master of Mint

1703: Hooke dies; Newton becomes president of Royal Society

1704: Published Opticks and his Calculus (Leibniz charges Plagiarism)

1705: Knighted (first Scientist); 1727: Died

“If I seem to have seen further than others, it is because I’ve been standing on the shoulders of giants.”

“I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy, playing on the sea shore, and diverting myself, in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay undiscovered before me”