Essays on Isaac Newton

Writing essays on isaac newton essays on Isaac Newton is not an easy task for many students. You should discover a lot of information regarding this scientist to write a well-researched essay. Reading some useful information about Issac Newton down below may help you.

Isaac Newton is a famous English scientist of the 17th century, the founder of classical physics, who described natural processes and phenomena with high accuracy. The most famous fact of Newton’s biography is the discovery of the law of universal gravitation.

Childhood

Very little is known about the childhood period in the biography of Isaac Newton. Brief information about the birth of the scientist is available in modern sources. The scientist was born in Great Britain on December 25, 1642. His parents were simple farmers and lived in a town called Woolsthorpe. The baby was born premature and so weak that loved ones feared for his life.

From childhood, the boy was deprived of parental care: his father died suddenly before his birth, and his mother left him in the care of his grandmother. When the child was three years old, the woman chose to remarry and live away from home. For little Isaac, this was a terrible shock. The feeling of rejection by those who are dear to him, for many years, haunted the child. According to eyewitnesses, as an adult, Newton avoided people and did not like heart-to-heart conversations.

School

Another fact from the biography of Isaac Newton is his unsociability and intolerance towards peers. While studying at school, the boy was well aware of his physical weakness and could not give a worthy rebuff to the offenders. In adolescence, Isaac caused extremely irritation among his peers. He avoided outdoor games where it was required to show strength and flexibility, but the future scientist won any intellectual battle without difficulty, coming up with original answers or solving a problem in an extraordinary way.

The boy was extremely inattentive and had no interest in learning. Just in order to prove his superiority over a classmate, he changed his attitude to knowledge. Newton set to work with zeal and became almost the first student in the class.

Despite the lack of diligence, the boy grew up very inquisitive. He could spend hours looking at any mechanisms and studying their structure. Technique interested him so much that he decided to make the simplest designs himself. His arsenal included a windmill, water clock, pedal carriage. Newton was a well-rounded child: in addition to mechanisms, he showed an interest in the visual arts and read a lot.

Life Difficulties

At the age of 14, Isaac was forced to leave the walls of his beloved school in Grantham to help his family in farming. The tuition fees were too high, and relatives could no longer help the future scientist. His mother was once again widowed and deprived of any support.

However, it was these sad events that contributed to the development of new thinking in the young man. In short, this period was the most important in Newton’s biography. Left alone with nature, he became seriously interested in mathematics, forming his first ideas about this amazing science.

Once Newton’s uncle was walking around the estate and found a young man solving a difficult problem. Having learned about the seriousness of Isaac’s intentions, his mother decided to send him back to school. The woman understood that a child with such an inquiring mind suffers from a lack of knowledge. The school leadership went to meet the talented student who perfectly quoted the Bible and reduced the tuition fee.

Cambridge and new ideas

At the age of 18, the young man entered college at the University of Cambridge as a subsidiary. This was the name given to students who did not have the opportunity to pay for their education and entered the service. In 1664, he successfully passed the exams and received student status, which gave him the right to further education. A year later, Newton received his bachelor’s degree.

Cambridge, England

The period from 1665 to 1667 was difficult in the biography of Isaac Newton. To avoid death from the outbreak of the plague, he had to temporarily leave his native university. The scientist returned to his estate in Woolsthorpe, where he spent a long time alone, doing scientific research.

It was during this period that Newton formed his first ideas about integral and differential calculus. This theoretical base formed the basis of other scientific works that contributed to the development of mathematical knowledge.

Character and Personal Life

According to countless essays on isaac newton essays on Isaac Newton, in his youth, Newton had a stubborn character and did not forgive human weaknesses. But in adulthood, he began to be more forgiving towards others and more than once helped them. He was especially attentive to young people in financial difficulties. The scientist has repeatedly helped young geniuses in difficult situations.

The scientist was thrifty, but not stingy, and knew how to rationally manage funds. He led a somewhat secluded life, avoided noisy companies, and never traveled. Distinctive features of his character were excessive seriousness and absent-mindedness, because of which he found himself in ridiculous situations.

There is practically no information about the scientist’s personal life. He led a bachelor lifestyle – this is a well-known fact in the biography of Isaac Newton. Briefly, one can only say about his relatives, with whom he maintained close relations. His half-sister Anna died at a young age, leaving young children in the care of the scientist. Isaac Newton provided them with material support, and the youngest girl named Catherine raised on his own.

Scientist Philosophy

An unconventional approach to the study of natural phenomena is perhaps the most important thing in the biography of Isaac Newton. And the brief conclusions made by the scientist completely refuted the existing scientific views. He was one of the first to criticize Cartesian ideas about the speculative knowledge of the world. When constructing scientific theories, Cartesians often used not only experimental data. Hence, ideas arose about unknown “substances” and their magical properties.

Isaac Newton believed that fundamental knowledge can only be obtained empirically. And everything that does not lend itself to experimental verification should have the status of a hypothesis. In his works, the scientist adhered to mechanistic views, believing that natural phenomena can be explained exclusively by movement. Newton assumed that the primary cause of all processes is the collision and interaction of particles. Despite the fact that such an opinion was erroneous, the mechanistic picture of the world became the basis for the further development of philosophical ideas.

Advances in Mathematics

Newton achieved great success in mathematical analysis and was able to apply new methods to describe natural phenomena. Another fact of the biography of Isaac Newton: the scientist was one of the first to create the beginnings of analytical methods that are still used to solve complex problems. Isaac Newton’s achievements include differential and integral calculus, the foundations of which were laid back in his student years.

Thanks to Newton’s research in mathematics, a method for solving equations with finding the root was created. Another achievement of the scientist is the creation of the theory of infinite series, which has become the main method for analyzing functions. An idea was formed about the derivative and the whole complex of mathematical concepts. Simultaneously with Newton, other well-known mathematicians published their works – Leibniz, Fermat. Based on the knowledge of his predecessors, the scientist supplemented and developed mathematical knowledge.

Discoveries in Physics

First of all, the scientist became famous for his achievements in the field of mechanics and optics – this is a well-known fact of the biography of Isaac Newton. Physics was for him a more interesting area of ​​knowledge than mathematics, which he used only to describe natural phenomena.

One of the scientist’s achievements was that he introduced the concept of body weight. Previously, scientists used only the amount of weight, which depended on the location of the body in space and its movement. Mass was an absolute value, which made it possible to further use it to describe various physical phenomena.

The most famous are Newton’s laws, which in the modern version are studied in the school curriculum and are the main topic of essays on isaac newton essays on Isaac Newton. They were formulated by the scientist taking into account the concepts of inertia and gravitational properties of bodies. Thus, he proved the similarity of the laws of motion for celestial and terrestrial objects.

Optics and Astronomy

Even in his youth, Isaac Newton was interested in optical phenomena and was engaged in the creation of the first mirror telescope. He studied the phenomenon of dispersion and proved that light has a spectral nature. When passing it through a lens, he discovered decomposition into beams of different colors.

The scientist was actively involved in astronomy and tried to describe the movement of celestial bodies. It was thanks to this that he discovered the law of universal gravitation. This is one of the most famous facts in the biography of Isaac Newton. His discovery is described in a short legend as follows. One day, a scientist indulged in thought in the garden and noticed that a ripe apple had fallen from a tree. He began to wonder why the fruits always fall to the ground, thus laying the foundation for further research.

As many essays on isaac newton essays on Isaac Newton state, after the concept of gravitational force was introduced, the scientist was able to derive a mathematical formula and explain with its help the motion of celestial bodies. Based on Kepler’s laws, the scientist described how comets and the moon move, and also identified the cause of the lunar ebb and flow.