Head and shoulders portrait of man in black with shoulder-length gray hair, a large sharp nose, and an abstracted gaze
Godfrey Kneller's 1689 portrait of Isaac Newton
(aged 46)
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| Birth date | 4 January 1643
[OS: 25 December 1642] | | Birth place | Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth
Lincolnshire, England | | Death date | 31 March 1727(age 84)
[OS: 20 March 1726] | | Death place | Kensington, Middlesex, England | | Residence | England | | Fields | physics, mathematics, astronomy, natural philosophy, alchemy, Christian theology | | Institutions | University of Cambridge
Royal Society
Royal Mint | | Alma mater | Trinity College, Cambridge | | Academic advisors | Isaac Barrow
Benjamin Pulleyn | | Notable students | Roger Cotes
William Whiston | | Known for | Newtonian mechanics
Universal gravitation
Infinitesimal calculus
Optics
Binomial series
Newton's method
Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica | | Influences | Henry More
Polish Brethren | | Influenced | Nicolas Fatio de Duillier
John Keill |
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Sir Isaac Newton FRS (4 January 1643 - 31 March 1727 [Old Style and New Style datesOS: 25 December 1642 - 20 March 1726])
Newton also built the first practical reflecting telescope and developed a theory of colour based on the observation that a prism decomposes white light into the many colours that form the visible spectrum. He also formulated an empirical law of cooling and studied the speed of sound.
In mathematics, Newton shares the credit with Gottfried Leibniz for the development of the differential and integral calculus. He also demonstrated the generalised binomial theorem, developed Newton's method for approximating the roots of a function, and contributed to the study of power series.
Newton remains uniquely influential to scientists, as demonstrated by a 2005 survey of members of Britain's Royal Society asking who had the greater effect on the history of science and had the greater contribution to humankind, Newton or Albert Einstein. Royal Society scientists deemed Newton to have made the greater overall contribution on both.
Newton was also highly religious, though an unorthodox Christian, writing more on Biblical hermeneutics and occult studies than the natural science for which he is remembered today. In spite of this, The 100 by astrophysicist Michael H. Hart ranks Newton as the second most influential person in history (below Muhammad and above Jesus).
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