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Isaac Newton

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                                Isaac Newton
         Sir Isaac Newton at 46 in Godfrey Kneller's 1689 portrait
         Born 4 January 1643 [ OS: 25 December 1642]
              Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth, Lincolnshire, England
      Died    31 March 1727 [ OS: 20 March 1727]
              Kensington, London, England
   Occupation Physicist, mathematician, astronomer, alchemist, and natural
              philosopher

   Sir Isaac Newton, FRS ( 4 January 1643 – 31 March 1727) [ OS: 25
   December 1642 – 20 March 1727] was an English physicist, mathematician,
   astronomer, alchemist, and natural philosopher, regarded by many as the
   greatest figure in the history of science. His treatise Philosophiae
   Naturalis Principia Mathematica, published in 1687, described universal
   gravitation and the three laws of motion, laying the groundwork for
   classical mechanics. By deriving Kepler's laws of planetary motion from
   this system, he was the first to show that the motion of objects on
   Earth and of celestial bodies are governed by the same set of natural
   laws. The unifying and deterministic power of his laws was integral to
   the scientific revolution and the advancement of heliocentrism.

   In mechanics, Newton also markedly enunciated the principles of
   conservation of momentum and angular momentum. In optics, he invented
   the reflecting telescope and discovered that the spectrum of colours
   observed when white light passes through a prism is inherent in the
   white light and not added by the prism (as Roger Bacon had claimed in
   the thirteenth century). Newton notably argued that light is composed
   of particles. He also formulated an empirical law of cooling, studied
   the speed of sound, and proposed a theory of the origin of stars. In
   mathematics, Newton shares the credit with Gottfried Leibniz for the
   development of calculus. He also demonstrated the generalized binomial
   theorem, developed the so-called " Newton's method" for approximating
   the zeroes of a function, and contributed to the study of power series.

   French mathematician Joseph-Louis Lagrange often said that Newton was
   the greatest genius who ever lived, and once added that he was also
   "the most fortunate, for we cannot find more than once a system of the
   world to establish." English poet Alexander Pope was moved by Newton's
   accomplishments to write the famous epitaph:

     Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night;
     God said "Let Newton be" and all was light.

Biography

Early years

      The life of
   Isaac Newton
   Early life
   Writing Principia
   Later life
   Religious views
   Occult studies

   Newton was born at Woolsthorpe Manor in Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth, a
   hamlet in the county of Lincolnshire. He was born to a family of
   farmers who owned animals and land, thus making them fairly wealthy.
   The location he was born at was about seven miles from Grantham, where
   he later attended school. By his own later accounts, Newton was born
   prematurely and no one expected him to live; his mother Hannah Ayscough
   said that his body at that time could have fit inside a quart mug. His
   father, also named Isaac Newton, had been a yeoman farmer and had died
   three months before Newton's birth, at the time of the English Civil
   War. When Newton was three, his mother remarried and went to live with
   her new husband, leaving her son in the care of his maternal
   grandmother, Margery Ayscough.

   According to E.T. Bell and H. Eves:

          Newton began his schooling in the village schools and was later
          sent to The King's School, Grantham, where he became the top boy
          in the school. At Kings, he lodged with the local apothecary,
          William Clarke and eventually became engaged to the apothecary's
          stepdaughter, Anne Storey, before he went off to Cambridge
          University at the age of 19. As Newton became engrossed in his
          studies, the romance cooled and Miss Storey married someone
          else. It is said he kept a warm memory of this love, but Newton
          had no other recorded "sweethearts" and never married.

   However, Bell and Eves' sources for this claim, William Stukeley and
   Mrs. Vincent (the former Miss Storey - actually named Katherine, not
   Anne), merely say that Newton entertained "a passion" for Storey while
   he lodged at the Clarke house.
   Engraving after Enoch Seeman's 1726 portrait of Newton
   Enlarge
   Engraving after Enoch Seeman's 1726 portrait of Newton

   From the age of about twelve until he was seventeen, Newton was
   educated at The King's School, Grantham (where his signature can still
   be seen upon a library window sill). He was removed from school, and by
   October 1659, he was to be found at Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth, where
   his mother attempted to make a farmer of him. He was, by later reports
   of his contemporaries, thoroughly unhappy with the work. It appears to
   be Henry Stokes, master at the King's School, who persuaded his mother
   to send him back to school so that he might complete his education.
   This he did at the age of eighteen, achieving an admirable final
   report.

   In June 1661, he was admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge. At that
   time, the college's teachings were based on those of Aristotle, but
   Newton preferred to read the more advanced ideas of modern philosophers
   such as Descartes and astronomers such as Galileo, Copernicus and
   Kepler. In 1665, he discovered the generalised binomial theorem and
   began to develop a mathematical theory that would later become
   calculus. Soon after Newton had obtained his degree in 1665, the
   University closed down as a precaution against the Great Plague. For
   the next 18 months Newton worked at home on calculus, optics and the
   law of gravitation.

Middle years

Mathematical research

   Newton and Gottfried Leibniz developed calculus independently, using
   their own unique notations (as most great mathematicions do.) Although
   Newton had worked out his method years before Leibniz, he published
   almost nothing about it until 1693, and did not give a full account
   until 1704. Meanwhile, Leibniz began publishing a full account of his
   methods in 1684. Moreover, Leibniz's notation and "differential Method"
   were universally adopted on the Continent, and after 1820 or so, in the
   British Empire. Newton claimed that he had been reluctant to publish
   his calculus because he feared being mocked for it. Starting in 1699,
   other members of the Royal Society accused Leibniz of plagiarism, and
   the dispute broke out in full force in 1711. Thus began the bitter
   calculus priority dispute with Leibniz, which marred the lives of both
   Newton and Leibniz until the latter's death in 1716. This dispute
   created a divide between British and Continental mathematicians that
   may have retarded the progress of British mathematics by at least a
   century.

   Newton is generally credited with the generalized binomial theorem,
   valid for any exponent. He discovered Newton's identities, Newton's
   method, classified cubic plane curves (polynomials of degree three in
   two variables), made substantial contributions to the theory of finite
   differences, and was the first to use fractional indices and to employ
   coordinate geometry to derive solutions to Diophantine equations. He
   approximated partial sums of the harmonic series by logarithms (a
   precursor to Euler's summation formula), and was the first to use power
   series with confidence and to revert power series. He also discovered a
   new formula for pi.

   He was elected Lucasian professor of mathematics in 1669. In that day,
   any fellow of Cambridge or Oxford had to be an ordained Anglican
   priest. However, the terms of the Lucasian professorship required that
   the holder not be active in the church (presumably so as to have more
   time for science). Newton argued that this should exempt him from the
   ordination requirement, and Charles II, whose permission was needed,
   accepted this argument. Thus a conflict between Newton's religious
   views and Anglican orthodoxy was averted.

Optics

   From 1670 to 1672, he lectured on optics. During this period he
   investigated the refraction of light, demonstrating that a prism could
   decompose white light into a spectrum of colours, and that a lens and a
   second prism could recompose the multicoloured spectrum into white
   light. He also showed that the coloured light does not change its
   properties, by separating out a coloured beam and shining it on various
   objects. Newton noted that regardless of whether it was reflected or
   scattered or transmitted, it stayed the same colour. Thus the colours
   we observe are the result of how objects interact with the incident
   already-coloured light, not the result of objects generating the
   colour. For more details, see Newton's theory of colour. Many of his
   findings in this field were criticized by later theorists, the most
   well-known being Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who postulated his own
   colour theories.
   A replica of Newton's 6-inch reflecting telescope of 1672 for the Royal
   Society.
   Enlarge
   A replica of Newton's 6-inch reflecting telescope of 1672 for the Royal
   Society.

   From this work he concluded that any refracting telescope would suffer
   from the dispersion of light into colours, and invented a reflecting
   telescope (today known as a Newtonian telescope) to bypass that
   problem. By grinding his own mirrors, using Newton's rings to judge the
   quality of the optics for his telescopes, he was able to produce a
   superior instrument to the refracting telescope, due primarily to the
   wider diameter of the mirror. (Only later, as glasses with a variety of
   refractive properties became available, did achromatic lenses for
   refractors become feasible.) In 1671 the Royal Society asked for a
   demonstration of his reflecting telescope. Their interest encouraged
   him to publish his notes On Colour, which he later expanded into his
   Opticks. When Robert Hooke criticised some of Newton's ideas, Newton
   was so offended that he withdrew from public debate. The two men
   remained enemies until Hooke's death.

   In one experiment, to prove that colour perception is caused by
   pressure on the eye, Newton slid a darning needle around the side of
   his eye until he could poke at its rear side, dispassionately noting
   "white, darke & coloured circles" so long as he kept stirring with "y^e
   bodkin."

   Newton argued that light is composed of particles, but he had to
   associate them with waves to explain the diffraction of light (Opticks
   Bk. II, Props. XII-L). Later physicists instead favoured a purely
   wavelike explanation of light to account for diffraction. Today's
   quantum mechanics restores the idea of " wave-particle duality",
   although photons bear very little resemblance to Newton's corpuscles
   (e.g., corpuscles refracted by accelerating toward the denser medium).

   ^Newton is believed to have been the first to explain precisely the
   formation of the rainbow from water droplets dispersed in the
   atmosphere in a rain shower. Figure 15 of Part II of Book One of the
   Opticks shows a perfect illustration of how this occurs.

   In his Hypothesis of Light of 1675, Newton posited the existence of the
   ether to transmit forces between particles. Newton was in contact with
   Henry More, the Cambridge Platonist who was born in Grantham, on
   alchemy, and now his interest in the subject revived. He replaced the
   ether with occult forces based on Hermetic ideas of attraction and
   repulsion between particles. John Maynard Keynes, who acquired many of
   Newton's writings on alchemy, stated that "Newton was not the first of
   the age of reason: he was the last of the magicians." Newton's interest
   in alchemy cannot be isolated from his contributions to science. (This
   was at a time when there was no clear distinction between alchemy and
   science.) Had he not relied on the occult idea of action at a distance,
   across a vacuum, he might not have developed his theory of gravity.
   (See also Isaac Newton's occult studies.)

   In 1704 Newton wrote Opticks, in which he expounded his corpuscular
   theory of light. He considered light to be made up of extremely subtle
   corpuscles, that ordinary matter was made of grosser corpuscles and
   speculated that through a kind of alchemical transmutation "Are not
   gross Bodies and Light convertible into one another,...and may not
   Bodies receive much of their Activity from the Particles of Light which
   enter their Composition?" Newton also constructed a primitive form of a
   frictional electrostatic generator, using a glass globe (Optics, 8th
   Query).

Gravity and motion

   Newton's own copy of his Principia, with hand written corrections for
   the second edition.
   Enlarge
   Newton's own copy of his Principia, with hand written corrections for
   the second edition.

   In 1679, Newton returned to his work on mechanics, i.e., gravitation
   and its effect on the orbits of planets, with reference to Kepler's
   laws of motion, and consulting with Hooke and Flamsteed on the subject.
   He published his results in De Motu Corporum (1684). This contained the
   beginnings of the laws of motion that would inform the Principia.

   The Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (now known as the
   Principia) was published on 5 July 1687 with encouragement and
   financial help from Edmond Halley. In this work Newton stated the three
   universal laws of motion that were not to be improved upon for more
   than two hundred years. He used the Latin word gravitas (weight) for
   the force that would become known as gravity, and defined the law of
   universal gravitation. In the same work he presented the first
   analytical determination, based on Boyle's law, of the speed of sound
   in air.

   With the Principia, Newton became internationally recognised. He
   acquired a circle of admirers, including the Swiss-born mathematician
   Nicolas Fatio de Duillier, with whom he formed an intense relationship
   that lasted until 1693. The end of this friendship led Newton to a
   nervous breakdown.

Later life

   Isaac Newton in 1712
   Enlarge
   Isaac Newton in 1712

   In the 1690s Newton wrote a number of religious tracts dealing with the
   literal interpretation of the Bible. Henry More's belief in the
   universe and rejection of Cartesian dualism may have influenced
   Newton's religious ideas. A manuscript he sent to John Locke in which
   he disputed the existence of the Trinity was never published. Later
   works — The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended (1728) and
   Observations Upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St.
   John (1733) — were published after his death. He also devoted a great
   deal of time to alchemy (see above).

   Newton was also a member of the Parliament of England from 1689 to 1690
   and in 1701, but his only recorded comments were to complain about a
   cold draft in the chamber and request that the window be closed.

   Newton moved to London to take up the post of warden of the Royal Mint
   in 1696, a position that he had obtained through the patronage of
   Charles Montagu, 1st Earl of Halifax, then Chancellor of the Exchequer.
   He took charge of England's great recoining, somewhat treading on the
   toes of Master Lucas (and finagling Edmond Halley into the job of
   deputy comptroller of the temporary Chester branch). Newton became
   perhaps the best-known Master of the Mint upon Lucas' death in 1699, a
   position Newton held until his death. These appointments were intended
   as sinecures, but Newton took them seriously, retiring from his
   Cambridge duties in 1701, and exercising his power to reform the
   currency and punish clippers and counterfeiters. As Master of the Mint
   in 1717 Newton unofficially moved the Pound Sterling from the silver
   standard to the gold standard by creating a relationship between gold
   coins and the silver penny in the "Law of Queen Anne"; these were all
   great reforms at the time, adding considerably to the wealth and
   stability of England. It was his work at the Mint, rather than his
   earlier contributions to science, that earned him a knighthood from
   Queen Anne in 1705.

   Newton was made President of the Royal Society in 1703 and an associate
   of the French Académie des Sciences. In his position at the Royal
   Society, Newton made an enemy of John Flamsteed, the Astronomer Royal,
   by prematurely publishing Flamsteed's star catalogue, which Newton had
   used in his studies.
   Newton's grave in Westminster Abbey
   Enlarge
   Newton's grave in Westminster Abbey

   Newton died in London on March 20th, 1727, and was buried in
   Westminster Abbey. His half-niece, Catherine Barton Conduitt, served as
   his hostess in social affairs at his house on Jermyn Street in London;
   he was her "very loving Uncle", according to his letter to her when she
   was recovering from smallpox. Although Newton, who had no children, had
   divested much of his estate onto relatives in his last years he
   actually died intestate. His considerable liquid estate was divided
   equally between his eight half-nieces and half-nephews (three
   Pilkingtons, three Smiths and two Bartons (including Catherine Barton
   Conduitt). Woolsthorpe Manor passed to his heir-in-law, a John Newton
   ("God knows a poor representative of so great a man"), who, after six
   years of "cock[fight]ing, horse racing, drinking and folly" was forced
   to mortgage and then sell the manor before dying in a drunken accident.

   After his death, Newton's body was discovered to have had massive
   amounts of mercury in it, probably resulting from his alchemical
   pursuits. Mercury poisoning could explain Newton's eccentricity in late
   life.

Religious views

   Although the laws of motion and universal gravitation became Newton's
   best-known discoveries, he warned against using them to view the
   universe as a mere machine, as if akin to a great clock. He said,
   "Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who
   set the planets in motion. God governs all things and knows all that is
   or can be done."
   Isaac Newton (Bolton, Sarah K. Famous Men of Science. NY: Thomas Y.
   Crowell & Co., 1889)
   Enlarge
   Isaac Newton (Bolton, Sarah K. Famous Men of Science. NY: Thomas Y.
   Crowell & Co., 1889)

   His scientific fame notwithstanding, Newton's study of the Bible and of
   the early Church Fathers were among his greatest passions. He devoted
   more time to the study of the Scriptures, the Fathers, and to Alchemy
   than to science, and said, "I have a fundamental belief in the Bible as
   the Word of God, written by those who were inspired. I study the Bible
   daily." Newton himself wrote works on textual criticism, most notably
   An Historical Account of Two Notable Corruptions of Scripture. Newton
   also placed the crucifixion of Jesus Christ at 3 April, AD 33, which is
   now the accepted traditional date. He also attempted, unsuccessfully,
   to find hidden messages within the Bible (See Bible code). Despite his
   focus on theology and alchemy, Newton tested and investigated these
   ideas with the scientific method, observing, hypothesising, and testing
   his theories. To Newton, his scientific and religious experiments were
   one and the same, observing and understanding how the world functioned.

   Newton may have rejected the church's doctrine of the Trinity. In a
   minority view, T.C. Pfizenmaier argues that he more likely held the
   Eastern Orthodox view of the Trinity rather than the Western one held
   by Roman Catholics, Anglicans, and most Protestants. In his own day, he
   was also accused of being a Rosicrucian (as were many in the Royal
   Society and in the court of Charles II).

   In his own lifetime, Newton wrote more on religion than he did on
   natural science. He believed in a rationally immanent world, but he
   rejected the hylozoism implicit in Leibniz and Baruch Spinoza. Thus,
   the ordered and dynamically informed universe could be understood, and
   must be understood, by an active reason, but this universe, to be
   perfect and ordained, had to be regular.

Newton's effect on religious thought

   "Newton," by William Blake; here, Newton is depicted as a 'divine
   geometer'
   Enlarge
   "Newton," by William Blake; here, Newton is depicted as a 'divine
   geometer'

   Newton and Robert Boyle’s mechanical philosophy was promoted by
   rationalist pamphleteers as a viable alternative to the pantheists and
   enthusiasts, and was accepted hesitantly by orthodox preachers as well
   as dissident preachers like the latitudinarians. Thus, the clarity and
   simplicity of science was seen as a way to combat the emotional and
   metaphysical superlatives of both superstitious enthusiasm and the
   threat of atheism, and, at the same time, the second wave of English
   deists used Newton's discoveries to demonstrate the possibility of a
   "Natural Religion."

   The attacks made against pre-Enlightenment "magical thinking," and the
   mystical elements of Christianity, were given their foundation with
   Boyle’s mechanical conception of the universe. Newton gave Boyle’s
   ideas their completion through mathematical proofs and, perhaps more
   important, was very successful in popularising them. Newton refashioned
   the world governed by an interventionist God into a world crafted by a
   God that designs along rational and universal principles. These
   principles were available for all people to discover, allowed man to
   pursue his own aims fruitfully in this life, not the next, and to
   perfect himself with his own rational powers.

   Newton saw God as the master creator whose existence could not be
   denied in the face of the grandeur of all creation. But the unforeseen
   theological consequence of his conception of God, as Leibniz pointed
   out, was that God was now entirely removed from the world’s affairs,
   since the need for intervention would only evidence some imperfection
   in God’s creation, something impossible for a perfect and omnipotent
   creator. Leibniz's theodicy cleared God from the responsibility for "
   l'origine du mal" by making God removed from participation in his
   creation. The understanding of the world was now brought down to the
   level of simple human reason, and humans, as Odo Marquard argued,
   became responsible for the correction and elimination of evil.

   On the other hand, latitudinarian and Newtonian ideas taken too far
   resulted in the millenarians, a religious faction dedicated to the
   concept of a mechanical universe, but finding in it the same enthusiasm
   and mysticism that the Enlightenment had fought so hard to extinguish.

Newton and the counterfeiters

   As warden of the royal mint, Newton estimated that 20% of the coins
   taken in during The Great Recoinage were counterfeit. Counterfeiting
   was treason, punishable by death by drawing and quartering. Despite
   this, convictions of the most flagrant criminals could be extremely
   difficult to achieve; however, Newton proved to be equal to the task.

   He gathered much of that evidence himself, disguised, while he hung out
   at bars and taverns. For all the barriers placed to prosecution, and
   separating the branches of government, English law still had ancient
   and formidable customs of authority. Newton was made a justice of the
   peace and between June 1698 and Christmas 1699 conducted some 200
   cross-examinations of witnesses, informers and suspects. Newton won his
   convictions and in February 1699, he had ten prisoners waiting to be
   executed. He later ordered all records of his interrogations to be
   destroyed.

   Newton's greatest triumph as the king's attorney was against William
   Chaloner. One of Chaloner's schemes was to set up phony conspiracies of
   Catholics and then turn in the hapless conspirators whom he entrapped.
   Chaloner made himself rich enough to posture as a gentleman.
   Petitioning Parliament, Chaloner accused the Mint of providing tools to
   counterfeiters (a charge also made by others). He proposed that he be
   allowed to inspect the Mint's processes in order to improve them. He
   petitioned Parliament to adopt his plans for a coinage that could not
   be counterfeited, while at the same time striking false coins. Newton
   was outraged, and went about the work to uncover anything about
   Chaloner. During his studies, he found that Chaloner was engaged in
   counterfeiting. He immediately put Chaloner on trial, but Mr Chaloner
   had friends in high places, and to Newton's horror, Chaloner walked
   free. Newton put him on trial a second time with conclusive evidence.
   Chaloner was convicted of high treason and hanged, drawn and quartered
   on March 23, 1699 at Tyburn gallows.

Enlightenment philosophers

   Enlightenment philosophers chose a short history of scientific
   predecessors—Galileo, Boyle, and Newton principally—as the guides and
   guarantors of their applications of the singular concept of Nature and
   Natural Law to every physical and social field of the day. In this
   respect, the lessons of history and the social structures built upon it
   could be discarded.

   It was Newton’s conception of the universe based upon Natural and
   rationally understandable laws that became the seed for Enlightenment
   ideology. Locke and Voltaire applied concepts of Natural Law to
   political systems advocating intrinsic rights; the physiocrats and Adam
   Smith applied Natural conceptions of psychology and self-interest to
   economic systems and the sociologists criticised the current social
   order for trying to fit history into Natural models of progress.
   Monboddo and Samuel Clarke resisted elements of Newton's work, but
   eventually rationalised it to conform with their strong religious views
   of nature.

Newton's laws of motion

   The famous three laws of motion:
    1. Newton's First Law (also known as the Law of Inertia) states that
       an object at rest tends to stay at rest and that an object in
       uniform motion tends to stay in uniform motion unless acted upon by
       a net external force.
    2. Newton's Second Law states that an applied force, F, on an object
       equals the time rate of change of its momentum, p. Mathematically,
       this is written as \vec F = \frac{d\vec p}{dt} \, = \, \frac{d}{dt}
       (m \vec v) \, = \, \vec v \, \frac{dm}{dt} + m \, \frac{d\vec
       v}{dt} \,. Assuming the mass to be constant, the first term
       vanishes. Defining the acceleration to be \vec a \
       \stackrel{\mathrm{def}}{=}\ d\vec v/dt results in the famous
       equation \vec F = m \, \vec a \,, which states that the
       acceleration of an object is directly proportional to the magnitude
       of the net force acting on the object and inversely proportional to
       its mass. In the MKS system of measurement, mass is given in
       kilograms, acceleration in metres per second squared, and force in
       newtons (named in his honour).
    3. Newton's Third Law states that for every action there is an equal
       and opposite reaction.

Newton's apple

   A popular story claims that Newton was inspired to formulate his theory
   of universal gravitation by the fall of an apple from a tree. Cartoons
   have gone further to suggest the apple actually hit Newton's head, and
   that its impact somehow made him aware of the force of gravity. John
   Conduitt, Newton's assistant at the royal mint and husband of Newton's
   niece, described the event when he wrote about Newton's life:

     In the year 1666 he retired again from Cambridge ... to his mother
     in Lincolnshire & whilst he was musing in a garden it came into his
     thought that the power of gravity (which brought an apple from a
     tree to the ground) was not limited to a certain distance from
     earth, but that this power must extend much further than was usually
     thought. Why not as high as the Moon said he to himself & if so,
     that must influence her motion & perhaps retain her in her orbit,
     whereupon he fell a calculating what would be the effect of that
     supposition... (King's College, Cambridge, Keynes Ms. 130.4:
     Conduitt's account of Newton's life at Cambridge (c.1727-8) )

   The question was not whether gravity existed, but whether it extended
   so far from Earth that it could also be the force holding the moon to
   its orbit. Newton showed that if the force decreased as the inverse
   square of the distance, one could indeed calculate the Moon's orbital
   period, and get good agreement. He guessed the same force was
   responsible for other orbital motions, and hence named it "universal
   gravitation".

   A contemporary writer, William Stukeley, recorded in his Memoirs of Sir
   Isaac Newton's Life a conversation with Newton in Kensington on 15
   April 1726, in which Newton recalled "when formerly, the notion of
   gravitation came into his mind. It was occasioned by the fall of an
   apple, as he sat in contemplative mood. Why should that apple always
   descend perpendicularly to the ground, thought he to himself. Why
   should it not go sideways or upwards, but constantly to the earth's
   centre." In similar terms, Voltaire wrote in his Essay on Epic Poetry
   (1727), "Sir Isaac Newton walking in his gardens, had the first thought
   of his system of gravitation, upon seeing an apple falling from a
   tree." These accounts are probably exaggerations of Newton's own tale
   about sitting by a window in his home ( Woolsthorpe Manor) and watching
   an apple fall from a tree.

   Various trees are claimed to be "the" apple tree which Newton
   describes, the King's School, Grantham, claims that the tree was
   purchased by the school, uprooted and transported to the headmaster's
   garden some years later, the staff of the [now] National Trust-owned
   Woolsthrope Manor dispute this, and claim that a tree present in their
   gardens is the one described by Newton. It is also claimed that the
   tree was replanted in front of the council buildings in Grantham, which
   is unlikely, considering that they were built over 300 years after
   Newton's death. A descendant of the original tree can be seen growing
   outside the main gate of Trinity College, Cambridge, below the room
   Newton lived in when he studied there.

Writings by Newton

     * Method of Fluxions (1671)
     * De Motu Corporum in Gyrum (1684)
     * Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687)
     * Opticks (1704)
     * Reports as Master of the Mint (1701-1725)
     * Arithmetica Universalis (1707)
     * An Historical Account of Two Notable Corruptions of Scripture
       (1754)
     * Short Chronicle, The System of the World, Optical Lectures, The
       Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms, Amended and De mundi systemate were
       published posthumously in 1728.

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