Sir Isaac Newton (1642 - 1727, English), mathematician and physicist, one of the foremost scientific intellects of all time, was born near Grantham, Lincolnshire on Christmas day. He was the posthumous son of a yeoman farmer. As a boy he was only passively interested in his school work until he suddenly woke up at the age of adolescence. Earlier, he had shown unmistakable promise of experimental genius in the mechanical toys he invented and made to amuse himself and his young friends. He was delicate his childhood but matured into a sturdy man. He was sent to Trinity college, Cambridge, in 1661. His undergraduate career was not particularly distinguished. It should encourage intelligent beginners to know that Newton found analytic geometry difficult at a first reading.

Perhaps fortunately for mathematics, Newton’s studies were interrupted in 1665-66 by the Great plague, when the university closed. Newton returned home, but not to farm. He had imagined the fundamental ideas of his fluxions (calculus) and his law of universal gravitation. He was elected a fellow of Trinity, and in 1669 succeeded his teacher Barrow, who resigned in his favour as Lucasian professor of mathematics.

Newton solved many mysteries of nature. He showed that white sunlight is composed of seven colours; Violet, Indigo, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange, Red. He could separate these colours with the help of a prism. He also showed that the mixture of these seven colours could produce white light. His researches concerning light has been published in a book ‘Optics’. He could build the first reflecting telescope.

Many authorities feel that the whole development of modern science begins with the publication of Isaac Newton’s Philosophia Naturalis Principia Mathematica (mathematical principles of Natural philosophy) popularly known as Principia Mathematica in 1687. Here for the first time was presented a single mathematical law which could account for phenomena of the heavens, the motions of inanimate objects on earth and the tides. This was the crowing achievement of Newton’s career, the work that assured his reputation. It remained unchallenged for nearly 200 years after his death.

Among the wealth of scientific discoveries in the Principia are proofs leading to the law of universal gravitation.

Newtons’s intuition prompted him to correlate the falling of an apple (due to terrestrial gravitation) to the solar system (due to celestial gravitation)

(The story that Newton was inspired by an apple hilling his head is almost certainly apocryphal. All Newton himself ever said was that the idea of gravity came to him as he sat  “in a contemplative mood” and “was occasioned by the fall of an apple”.)

In 1701 he was elected as a member of the parliament. In 1703 he was elected president of Royal Society and held that post until his death. In 1705, he was knighted as ‘Sir’. Alexander Pope wrote a filling tribute.

“Nature and nature’s law lay hid by night; God said, let Newton be ! And all was light.”

“If I have seen further than other men, it is because I stood on the shoulders of giants” , Newton spoke of himself.