Isaac Newton
English mathematician and physicist (1643–1727); author of the Principia and Opticks.
At a glance
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- Sir Isaac Newton was an English mathematician, physicist and astronomer, a key figure of the Scientific Revolution.
- His Principia (1687) set out the laws of motion and universal gravitation and established classical mechanics.
- He shares credit with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz for inventing calculus.
- He built the first reflecting telescope and showed that a prism splits white light into a spectrum, work collected in Opticks (1704).
Key facts
- Born
- 4 January 1643 (25 December 1642, Old Style)1
- Died
- 31 March 1727 (20 March 1726, Old Style)1
- Major works
- Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687); Opticks (1704)1
- Known for
- Laws of motion and universal gravitation; calculus; the reflecting telescope; theory of colour1
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