Isaac Newton was born January 4, 1643 although it is disputed that he was born Christmas Day 1642 according to the Julian Calendar at the time, in Lincolnshire England. His father passed before he was born, his mother remarried not long after he was born, and he grew up with his grandmother. He attended the King’s School from ages 12-17 and was the top of his class and later attended Trinity College in 1661.
There he showed interest in the great philosophers and astronomers, and also showed great skill in math and physics and worked on binomial theorems and worked to develop mathematical theories that later formed into calculus. In 1665 Trinity College was closed due to the Plague, which Newton would take as a chance to work on his calculus theories and also worked in optics and the law of gravitation and worked on various experiments including the refraction of light on a prism that then appears in the color spectrum.
In 1667 he became a Fellow of Trinity College and in 1669 a Professor of Mathematics. His work in calculus started as a method to find the slope at any point on a curve whose slope was constantly varying. He calculated the derivative in order to find said slope and would call this method the “Method of Fluxions” and defined a “fluxion” as the instantaneous rate of change at a point on a curve and the “fluents” as the changing values of x and y.
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One of his contributions actually connects to our class, the theory of infinite differences, which we call the Method of Successive Differences and used to find the connection between a series of numbers and the next term in the sequence. I really don’t have much of an opinion of Isaac Newton. Growing up we’ve all obviously learned about him and his theory of gravity and the apple.
Though, his theories are handy such as if you throw something in the air you’d better be prepared to catch it because it’s going to come back to you, or make sure you move out of the way of the piano on the crane or the cool thing that happens when you make light hit a mirror or another form of glass just right. His theories explain everyday occurrences. I do however think it’s kind of cool that he kind of fancied himself an alchemist, sought to create the Philosopher’s Stone (ala Harry Potter) and his studies into the occult.
Bibliography
- https://famous-mathematicians.com/isaac-newton/ https://3010tangents.wordpress.com/2015/05/05/isaac-newton-and-his-contributions-to-mathematics/
- https://www.biography.com/news/isaac-newton-alchemy-philosophers-stone
