Isaac Newton

Newton was born in a Lincolnshire farmhouse in 1643, after his father's death, and grew up solitary and mechanical. At Cambridge he read the new philosophy, and during the plague years at home he worked out the calculus, the composition of light, and the first hints of gravitation.

Principia Mathematica (1687) states the three laws of motion and the law of universal gravitation, showing that the fall of an apple and the orbit of the Moon obey the same mathematics. Opticks reported his experiments with prisms and light, and he was as committed to alchemy and biblical chronology as to mechanics.

He became president of the Royal Society and master of the Mint, was knighted in 1705, and quarrelled for years with Leibniz over the invention of the calculus. He died in London in 1727.

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