Unit Sixteen

Outstanding People of Great Britain

Britain produced statesmen, thinkers, explorers, musicians, writers, scientists and other people who are well known around the world.

Newton – Prominent English Scientist

(1643 - 1727)

Newton, one of the greatest scientists of all time, was born in the year in which Galileo died at the little village near Lincolnshire. His farther was a farmer. His mother was a housewife and very clever woman. Newton’s school days were not remarkable. At school he was a strange boy, interested in constructing mechanical devices of his own design, curious about the world around him, but showing no signs of unusual brightness. He seemed to be rather slow in his studies in his age.

In the late 1650s he was taken out of school to help on his mother's farm, where he was clearly the world's worst farmer. His uncle detecting the scholar in the young man said that he had to be sent to Cambridge. In 1660 this was done and in 1665 Newton graduated. The plague hit London and he retired to his mother's farm to remain out of danger. He had already worked out the binomial theorem in mathematics.

At his mother's farm something greater happened. He watched an apple fall to the ground and began to wonder if the same force that pulled the apple down also held the Moon in its grip. The story of the apple has often been thought a myth, but according to Newton's own words, it is true. This event led him to a great scientific discovery.

Newton theorized that the rate of fall was proportional to the strength of the gravitational force and that this force fell off according to the square of the distance from the centre of the Earth. (This is the famous «inverse square» law). He made his calculations which appeared to be wrong and did not prove his observation. He was dreadfully disappointed and put the problem of gravitation aside for fifteen years.

In this same period 1665—1666 Newton conducted startling optical experiments. Newton's prism experiments made him famous. In 1669 his mathematics teacher resigned in his favour and Newton at twenty-seven found himself a professor of mathematics at Cambridge. He was elected to the Royal Societyin 1672. His famous «Principia Mathematica» was published in 1687. It is the greatest scientific work ever written.

Newton was respected in his lifetime as no scientist before him. When he died he was buried in Westminster Abbey along with England's heroes. The great French literary figure Voltaire, who was visiting England at that time, commented with admiration that England honoured a mathematician as other nations honoured a king. The Latin inscription on his tomb ends with the sentence, «Mortals! Rejoice at so great an ornament to the human race!»