Educated at the Free Gramnmar School in Grantham and Trinity College, Cambridge where he studied philosophy, astronomy and mathematics, Newton published his first work, Certain Philosophical Questions in 1664. He received his degree in early 1665, but by the summer the University had closed because of fears of the plague and Newton returned to Lincolnshire. During the next two years he began to make revolutionary advances in mathematics, astronomy, optics and physics, laying the foundations of differential and integral calculus several years before Leibniz. In later years, the dispute would rage between Leibniz and Newton for credit of this discovery until Newton was vindicated by the Royual Society in 1712 as being the true founder of the method. In 1667, the University reopened and Newton received his Master's Degree the following year. In 1668, he was awarded a fellowship at Cambridge and the following year was appointed to the Lucasian chair. He began work on a reflecting telescope which led to his election as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1672. He published his first paper on light and colour in 1672 in the Society's Philosophical Transactions and this led in turn to an ongoing dispute with Robert Hooke. By 1679, Newton's greatest single achievement, the theory of universal gravitation, had been formalised. In 1684, the astronomer Edmund Halley, persuaded Newton to publish his new physics and its application to astronomy. In 1687, he published Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, probably the single greatest scientific book ever published. During the reign of James II, Newton, a staunch Protestant, defened the University's position against action by the Catholic James in his attempts to have a Benedictine monk receive a degree without sitting an examination. When William of Orange's invasion forced James to flee to France, Newton was elected to the Convention Parliament in 1689 which declared the abdication of James and the accession of William and Mary. When Newton suffered a nervous breakdown in 1693, he retired more or less from academic work and took a position as Warden of the Royal Mint in 1696. In 1699, he became Master of the Royal Mint. In 1703, he was elected president of the Royal Society, a post he would hold until his death 24 years later. He was knighted in 1705. Newton made numerous contributions while at the Mint including measures to prevent counterfeiting and produced a number of papers on coinage, etc. Newton's other works included Optiks (1704), Universal Arithmetic (1707), Methodus Differentialis (1711), Analysis by Infinite Series (1711), and the posthumously published works The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended (1728), The System of the World (1728), Lektiones Optika (1729), Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John (1733) and Geometrica Analytica (1779). |
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