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| Isaac Newton (1642-1727) |
English mathematician and physicist Isaac Newton was considered to be one of the most intelligent people who ever lived. Newton articulated the law of universal gravitation and wrote one of the most important books about science of all time. Following a difficult childhood, Newton went at age nineteen to study at Trinity College, Cambridge. There he studied the works of Johannes Kepler, Rene Descartes, Galileo, and Copernicus. He graduated in 1665, the year the university closed due to an outbreak of bubonic plague, and returned to the family farm. Agricultural work left Newton plenty of time to think and to conduct experiments. He studied the rainbow created by light passed through a prism and realized that white light is really a combination of all the colors. He also invented calculus, a method of calculation by a system of algebraic notations—at the same time as, yet independent of, German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz. And it was in the period of farm life after college that Newton developed his famous universal theory of grav¬ity. Newton later returned to Cambridge to assume the Lucasian Professorship of Mathematics.
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