Isaac Newton Truly Was One Of A?Kind
March 26, 2019 at 2:26 p.m.
By Max [email protected]
Freed from the control of any professors, he was able to explore his ideas with even more curiosity, and take more intellectual risks than he had been able to at school. He read voraciously, and developed new theories about math and science, perfected telescope optics, discovered new information about the solar system, worked on developing the mathematics of calculus, and described the laws of light, motion and gravity.
With this in mind, one would wonder what would happen if we closed our universities for one year told the students to study on their own, and then report each of their new ideas or discoveries. Odds are, the collective or individual results would not approach any of Newton's seminal contributions. In fairness, however, Newton was a genius who revolutionized science. He has been called the greatest mind of all time – his discoveries helped shape the world.
James Gleick, in his book about Newton, wrote the following: "He was born into a world of darkness, obscurity, and magic; led a strangely pure and obsessive life, lacking parents, lovers and friends; quarreled bitterly with great men who crossed his path; veered at least once to the brink of madness; cloaked his work in secrecy; and yet discovered more of the essential core of human knowledge than anyone before or after. He was chief architect of the modern world."
Newton laid the foundation for the world we live in. Theoretical and applied science owes its thanks to Sir Isaac Newton for carving the paths so arrogantly strode. Because of his scientific breakthroughs, other es-teemed scientists, such as Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison, were able to complete the work that lay before them. Without Newton, none of that would have happened.
Newton was a wonder of his day and age. According to Gleick and other biographers, "Newton stood aloof from other philosophers even after becoming a national icon – Sir Isaac, Master of the Mint, President of the Royal Society, his likeness engraved on medals, his discoveries exalted in verse."
Newton was born on Jan. 4, 1643, in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England. The son of a farmer who died three months before he was born, Newton spent most of his early years with his maternal grandmother after his mother remarried. Fortunately his education was interrupted by a failed attempt to turn him into a farmer.
Although Newton’s early educational career got off to a slow start when he was attending grammar school, his apprenticeship to an apothecary (a pharmacist) did spark an interest in science. Ironically, in the 1600s, apothecaries were doing much more scientific research (as we would understand the idea of “scientific research” today) than schools or universities were doing. While schools took almost all their information from “the classical authorities” like the works of Euclid, apothecaries actually had a reason to care about finding out new information – so that they could save more lives with their medicine.
At age 19, following grammar school, Newton enrolled in the University of Cambridge's Trinity College in 1661. He returned to Cambridge in 1667 and was elected a minor fellow. One year later he constructed the first reflecting telescope, and the following year received his Master of Arts degree and took over as Cambridge's prestigious Lucasian Professor of Mathematics. Asked to give a demonstration of his telescope to the Royal Society of London in 1671, he was elected to the society the following year. Years of research culminated with the publication of "Principia" in 1687, a landmark work that established the universal laws of motion and gravity. The book earned universal acclaim as one of the most important works of modern science.
His second book, "Opticks," detailed his experiments to determine the properties of light. Through his experiments with refraction, Newton was the first to determine that white light was a composite of all the colors in the spectrum, and asserted that light was composed of particles rather than waves. Newton was an ardent student of history and religious doctrines, his writings on those subjects were compiled into multiple books published posthumously.
Newton is remembered as a transformative scholar, in-ventor and writer. His precise methodology gave birth to what is known as the scientific method. Although his theories of space time and gravity eventually were superseded by those of Albert Einstein, his work remains the bedrock on which modern physics was built.
Max Sherman is a medical writer and pharmacist retired from the medical device industry. He has taught college courses on regulatory and compliance issues at Ivy Tech, Grace College and Butler University. Sherman has an unquenchable thirst for knowledge on all levels. Eclectic Science, the title of his column, touches on famed doctors and scientists, human senses, aging, various diseases, and little-known facts about many species, including their contributions to scientific research. He can be reached by email at [email protected].
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Freed from the control of any professors, he was able to explore his ideas with even more curiosity, and take more intellectual risks than he had been able to at school. He read voraciously, and developed new theories about math and science, perfected telescope optics, discovered new information about the solar system, worked on developing the mathematics of calculus, and described the laws of light, motion and gravity.
With this in mind, one would wonder what would happen if we closed our universities for one year told the students to study on their own, and then report each of their new ideas or discoveries. Odds are, the collective or individual results would not approach any of Newton's seminal contributions. In fairness, however, Newton was a genius who revolutionized science. He has been called the greatest mind of all time – his discoveries helped shape the world.
James Gleick, in his book about Newton, wrote the following: "He was born into a world of darkness, obscurity, and magic; led a strangely pure and obsessive life, lacking parents, lovers and friends; quarreled bitterly with great men who crossed his path; veered at least once to the brink of madness; cloaked his work in secrecy; and yet discovered more of the essential core of human knowledge than anyone before or after. He was chief architect of the modern world."
Newton laid the foundation for the world we live in. Theoretical and applied science owes its thanks to Sir Isaac Newton for carving the paths so arrogantly strode. Because of his scientific breakthroughs, other es-teemed scientists, such as Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison, were able to complete the work that lay before them. Without Newton, none of that would have happened.
Newton was a wonder of his day and age. According to Gleick and other biographers, "Newton stood aloof from other philosophers even after becoming a national icon – Sir Isaac, Master of the Mint, President of the Royal Society, his likeness engraved on medals, his discoveries exalted in verse."
Newton was born on Jan. 4, 1643, in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England. The son of a farmer who died three months before he was born, Newton spent most of his early years with his maternal grandmother after his mother remarried. Fortunately his education was interrupted by a failed attempt to turn him into a farmer.
Although Newton’s early educational career got off to a slow start when he was attending grammar school, his apprenticeship to an apothecary (a pharmacist) did spark an interest in science. Ironically, in the 1600s, apothecaries were doing much more scientific research (as we would understand the idea of “scientific research” today) than schools or universities were doing. While schools took almost all their information from “the classical authorities” like the works of Euclid, apothecaries actually had a reason to care about finding out new information – so that they could save more lives with their medicine.
At age 19, following grammar school, Newton enrolled in the University of Cambridge's Trinity College in 1661. He returned to Cambridge in 1667 and was elected a minor fellow. One year later he constructed the first reflecting telescope, and the following year received his Master of Arts degree and took over as Cambridge's prestigious Lucasian Professor of Mathematics. Asked to give a demonstration of his telescope to the Royal Society of London in 1671, he was elected to the society the following year. Years of research culminated with the publication of "Principia" in 1687, a landmark work that established the universal laws of motion and gravity. The book earned universal acclaim as one of the most important works of modern science.
His second book, "Opticks," detailed his experiments to determine the properties of light. Through his experiments with refraction, Newton was the first to determine that white light was a composite of all the colors in the spectrum, and asserted that light was composed of particles rather than waves. Newton was an ardent student of history and religious doctrines, his writings on those subjects were compiled into multiple books published posthumously.
Newton is remembered as a transformative scholar, in-ventor and writer. His precise methodology gave birth to what is known as the scientific method. Although his theories of space time and gravity eventually were superseded by those of Albert Einstein, his work remains the bedrock on which modern physics was built.
Max Sherman is a medical writer and pharmacist retired from the medical device industry. He has taught college courses on regulatory and compliance issues at Ivy Tech, Grace College and Butler University. Sherman has an unquenchable thirst for knowledge on all levels. Eclectic Science, the title of his column, touches on famed doctors and scientists, human senses, aging, various diseases, and little-known facts about many species, including their contributions to scientific research. He can be reached by email at [email protected].
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