Isaac Newton Biography
Isaac Newton was born in the early hours of December 25, 1642 (January 4, 1643, according to the Gregorian calendar), in the small village of Woolsthorpe, in Lincolnshire. His father, a small landowner, had just died in early October, having married in April of that year with Hannah Ayscough, from a wealthy family in another time.
Isaac Newton was born in the early hours of December 25, 1642 (January 4, 1643, according to the Gregorian calendar), in the small village of Woolsthorpe, in Lincolnshire. His father, a small landowner, had just died in early October, having married in April of that year with Hannah Ayscough, from a wealthy family in another time.
When little Isaac had just turned three, his mother remarried to Reverend Barnabas Smith, rector of North Witham, which resulted in a fact that decisively influence the development of the character of Newton: Hannah moved to the home of her new husband and son stayed in Woolsthorpe, the care of his maternal grandmother.
Hate that it caused him to entertain Newton against her mother and the Reverend Smith gives a good account of the fact that, in a list of "sins" of those who autoinculpó at nineteen, number thirteen was having the desired incendiarles the house with them inside. When Newton was twelve years old, his mother, again widow, she returned to Woolsthorpe, bringing the substantial inheritance bequeathed her second husband (and Newton would benefit her death in 1679), plus three brothers to Isaac, two girls and a boy.
A year later the young Newton was registered in the King's School in the nearby town of Grantham. There is evidence that, in the years happened there I stayed in the house of the pharmacist, developed his unusual mechanical skill, which exercised in the construction of various mechanisms (the most quoted is a water clock) and toys (the famous kites , whose tail tied lanterns at night frightened his neighbors).
There was also a significant change in his character: his initial indifference to studies, probably arising from shyness and withdrawal, is turned into a fierce competitive spirit that led him to be first class, following a fight with a fellow who emerged victorious. Newton was a "sober, silent, meditative" boy, who preferred to build tools for girls to play with her dolls to share the fun of the other boys, according to the testimony of one of his childhood female companions, which, when it was an old woman, a sentimental relationship with Newton teenager was attributed, the only one known by a woman.
Compliments sixteen, his mother brought him back home to begin to address issues of inheritance. But Newton was not at all interested to assume its responsibilities as a landowner; his mother, advised by the master of Newton and his brother, agreed to come back to school to prepare for college admission.
In Cambridge
Finally, in June 1661, Newton was admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge, and enrolled as a student teacher, gaining their support in exchange for domestic services, although its economic situation does not seem required to do so. There he began to receive formal education on the principles of Aristotelian philosophy (then, schools that emphasized on scientific studies were in Oxford and London), but in 1663 his interest was piqued by issues research experimental nature, who studied on their own.
The result of these independent efforts were his first notes on what would become their calculation of fluxions, perhaps encouraged by some of the classes of mathematician and theologian Isaac Barrow; however, Newton had to be examined by Barrow in 1664 to pursue a scholarship, and then failed to inspire any particular favorable opinion.
In pleading in London the great plague of 1665, he closed its doors Cambridge and Newton returned to Woolsthorpe. In March 1666 he returned to Trinity, which again interrupted its activities in June to reappear plague, and definitely not resumed his studies until April 1667. In a letter published posthumously, Newton himself described the years of 1665 and 1666 as his "most fruitful time of invention," during which "thinking in mathematics and philosophy more than at any time since."
The method of fluxions, the theory of colors and the first ideas about the gravitational attraction, related to the permanence of the moon in its orbit around Earth, that Newton's achievements were mentioned as dating from those years, and himself He was responsible for spreading, also towards the end of his life story that relates his first thoughts on the law of gravity with the casual observation of an apple falling from any of the fruit from her garden. Voltaire was asked to disclose in print the story, who knew Newton's niece.
Mathematics teaching and research
On his final return to Cambridge, Newton was elected a Fellow of Trinity College Fellow in October 1667, and two years later succeeded Barrow in his chair. During his first years of teaching it does not seem to involve any lesson activities burden for him, as both the complexity of the issue as the tutorial teaching system favored classes absenteeism.
By that time, Newton wrote his first systematic expositions of infinitesimal calculus, which were not published until later. In 1664 or 1665 he had found the famous formula for the development of the power of a binomial with any exponent, whole or fractional, but gave written notice of the discovery until 1676, in two letters to Henry Oldenburg, secretary of the Royal Society ; Theorem published for the first time in 1685 John Wallis, the most important of the immediately preceding English mathematicians Newton, duly recognizing the priority of this latest finding.
The procedure followed by Newton to establish the binomial formula had the power to make him see the interest of infinite series for the infinitesimal calculus, thus legitimizing the intervention of infinite processes in mathematical reasoning and ending the traditional rejection of such tax Greek mathematics. The first substantial exhibition of his method of mathematical analysis by infinite series Newton wrote in 1669; Barrow met and became known text, and Newton was pressured aimed to allow publication, which despite (or perhaps because of it) the statement was never printed until 1711.
Disputes optics
Neither Newton classroom reported his mathematical results, which seems to have considered as a tool for the study of nature as a subject worthy of attention itself; Chapter of science in their classes chose was trying optics, which had been devoting his attention since 1666 had the idea that he had to take to his discovery of the composite nature of light.
In February 1672 he presented to the Royal Society his first communication on the subject, a few days after that company would have elected one of its members in recognition of building a reflecting telescope. Newton communication brought indisputable experimental evidence that white light was a mixture of rays of different colors, each characterized by its distinct refrangibility passing through an optical prism.
Newton considered, rightly, that their discovery was "the most singular, if not the most important of which have been made so far regarding the operation of nature." But its immediate consequences were to mark the beginning of a period of four years (1672-1676) during which, as he wrote to Leibniz in December 1675, "I was so harassed by discussions raised following the publication of my theory of light, which cursed me away from my recklessness by the considerable advantages of my silence to run after a shadow. "
The contrast between the obstinacy with which Newton defended his intellectual primacy belonged where he was recognized (only grudgingly admitting that others might having been anticipated), and his innate reticence that always made him see with distrust the possibility of having to mix with ordinary mortals, is one of the features of his biography that best seem to justify its characterization as neurotic temperament; a diagnosis that the realization of his childhood trauma has done nothing to pay, and has found confirmation in other components of his personality as hypochondria or misogyny.
The first to oppose his ideas on optics was Robert Hooke, who commissioned the Royal Society report on the theory presented by Newton. Hooke advocated a wave conception of light, compared to the ideas of Newton, specified in a new communication of 1675 that made the light a phenomenon resulting from the emission of light corpuscles by certain bodies. The bitterness of the controversy found that Newton resigned to publish a treaty containing the results of their research until after the death of Hooke and, indeed, his Optics was not published until 1704. The greatest work of Newton, Mathematical Principles of natural philosophy, would be released much earlier.
Newton resigned in 1676 to pursue the controversy about his theory of colors and for a few years, again took refuge in the privacy of his work on differential calculus and interest (not less intense private) for two subjects apparently sober away from his research into the nature world: alchemy and biblical studies. Newton's penchant for alchemy (John Maynard Keynes called it "the last of the magicians') she was in line with its efforts to transcend the strictly Cartesian enforcement mechanism that reduced everything to matter and motion and come to establish the effective presence of the spiritual in the operations of nature.
Newton did not conceive the cosmos as the creation of a God who had simply legislate and then leave him, but as the place in which God's will lived and was present, imbuing the atoms that made the world a spirit that was the same for all things and that made it possible to think of the existence of a single general principle of cosmic order. That quest for unity in nature by Newton was parallel to her research of primitive truth through Scripture, tracking that made him a convinced anti-Trinitarian and that surely influenced in their efforts to achieve real exemption from the obliged to receive holy orders to maintain his position at Trinity College
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Towards the Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy
In 1679 Newton was absent from Cambridge for several months because of the death of his mother; on his return; in November, he received a letter from Robert Hooke, then secretary of the Royal Society, which was trying to persuade him to re-establish contact with the institution and suggested the possibility of doing discussing the theories of Hooke himself about the movement of the planets.
As a result, Newton resumed a correspondence on the subject that, over time, would lead to priority claims regarding the formulation Hooke's law of gravitational attraction. For now, its effect was to return to his interest in Newton dynamics and make him see that the path followed by a body that moved under the effect of a force inversely proportional to the square of the distance would elliptical (and would not be a spiral, as Newton believed in principle, giving rise to be corrected by Hooke).
Five years later Edmond Halley, who by then had already observed the comet that later bore his name, visited Newton in Cambridge and asked what would be the orbit of a planet if gravity disminuyese with the square of the distance, his answer It was immediate: an ellipse. Marveled at the speed with which Newton considered resolved a matter in the clarification walked competing for several months Robert Hooke and Halley himself, astronomer asked how he could know Newton the shape of the curve and got a sharp reply: "I've calculated" . The distance was between the hint of a truth and its demonstration by calculation showed the fundamental difference between Hooke and Newton, illuminating the pair of the sense that the latter would give his persistent assertion "not fake hypothesis."
However, at the 1684 Summer day Newton could not find his calculations to show to Halley, and he had to settle for the promise that he would be sent one remade once. Reconstruction, however, hit a snag: to show that the force of attraction between two spheres is equal to that which would exist if the masses of each of them were concentrated in the respective centers. Newton solved that problem in February 1685, after checking the validity of his law of gravitational attraction by its application to the Moon; the idea was born twenty years earlier, it was then confirmed thanks to the accurate measurement of the radius of the Earth made by French astronomer Jean Picard.
The way was opened to collect all results in a treatise on the science of motion: Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy). Halley's intervention in the publication of the work was not limited to be able to convince the author to consent to it, and something very meritorious case of Newton; Halley was able to weather the storm of controversy with Hooke, he saw to it that the manuscript was submitted in April 1686 to the Royal Society and the latter assumed his edition, and finished running personally the cost of printing, completed in July 1687.
The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy contained the first printed exposure calculus created by Newton, although the author preferred that, in general, the work presented the foundations of physics and astronomy made in the synthetic language of geometry. Newton was not the first to use this type of calculation; in fact, the first edition of his book contained the recognition that Leibniz was in possession of a similar method. However, the dispute priorities supporters were engaged one another and found that Newton delete the reference to Leibniz in the third edition of 1726. The trigger for the controversy (orchestrated by Newton himself between racks) what was the insinuation that could have plagiarized Leibniz expressed in 1699 by Nicolas Fatio de Duillier, a Swiss mathematician admirer of Newton, with whom maintained a close friendship for 1689-1693.
That year Newton crossed by a paranoid crisis that has tried to give various explanations, among which is not missing, of course, consisting attributed to the breakdown of his relationship with the young Fatio, relationship, moreover It does not seem to take Newton to transfer its railway barriers Puritan moral code. Newton's contemporaries popularized unlikely explanation of their condition as a result of some of his manuscripts destroyed in a fire will result; more recently there has been talk of a slow and progressive intoxication resulting from his alchemical experiments with mercury and lead. Finally, they can not forget as a plausible cause of depression difficulties Newton found to get public recognition beyond the strict scope of science, recognizing that their pride demanded and whose absence could not interpret it as a result of a conspiracy history.
Last years
Despite the difficulty of reading, mathematical principles of natural philosophy had made him famous in the scientific community. In 1687, Newton had formed part of the commission that the University of Cambridge sent to London to oppose measures christanization King James II. But perhaps his intervention was due more to their secular condition that his fame, it was worth being chosen by the university as his representative in parliament formed as a result of the landing of William of Orange and exile of James II at the end of 1688 .
His parliamentary activity, which lasted until February 1690, was developed in close collaboration with Charles Montagu, later Lord Halifax, whom he had met a few years earlier as a student at Cambridge and was asked to comply with the wishes of Newton change academic retreat in Cambridge in public life in London. Montagu was appointed chancellor of the exchequer in April 1694; when the law recoinage was approved in 1695, he gave Newton the office of inspector Mint, being promoted to director in 1699. Lord Halifax eventually became the lover of Newton's niece, but the charges obtained by it, despite accusations by Voltaire, they did not have to do with it.
In late 1701, Newton was elected a new member of Parliament representing his college, but soon resigned definitively to his chair and his status as a fellow of Trinity College, confirming a departure from scientific activity going back, in fact , upon his arrival in London. In 1703, after the death of Hooke and when the end of the recoinage had become the direction of the Mint in a quiet sinecure, Newton was elected president of the Royal Society, a position he held until his death. In 1705 he was awarded a knighthood.
Despite his hypochondria, she nurtured since childhood for being a premature baby, Newton enjoyed good health until the last years of his life; in early 1722 it had kidney disease seriously ill for several months, and in 1724 there was a new renal colic. In early March 1727, the property of another stone in the bladder marked the beginning of his agony: Newton died at dawn on March 20, after refusing to receive the final aid of the Church, consistent with its abhorrence the dogma of the Trinity.
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