author
Isaac Newton
1642–1727
One of history’s great scientific minds, this English mathematician and natural philosopher helped change how people understand motion, gravity, light, and the cosmos. His work shaped modern science so deeply that its influence still reaches far beyond the laboratory.
5 Audiobooks
About the author
Born in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, Isaac Newton studied at Cambridge and rose to become one of the central figures of the Scientific Revolution. He is best known for developing the laws of motion and the law of universal gravitation, ideas brought together in Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica in 1687.
Newton also made major contributions to mathematics and optics. He developed powerful new methods in mathematics, carried out important experiments on light and color, and built an early reflecting telescope. His book Opticks helped spread his ideas about the behavior of light.
Later in life, he served as Warden and then Master of the Royal Mint, was elected President of the Royal Society in 1703, and was knighted in 1705. Remembered as a brilliant, intense, and sometimes private man, he remains one of the most influential thinkers in the history of science.