Newton’s discoveries were groundbreaking. Some of his greatest contributions were in mathematics. One discovery, calculus, had furthered the work of earlier mathematicians who were frustrated by the geometry used by Greeks that did not explain change and motion in the world around us. One of Newton’s discoveries stemmed from the problem he found that while it was possible to calculate the average slope of a curve, he could not calculate the slope at any given moment. He discovered that by taking the derivative of the function of the curve he could find the slope at any point. He called this ‘method of fluxions,’ now called differentiation. He also found the inverse operation of this method, integration, or as he called it, ‘method of fluents.’ As differentiation is the inverse of integration, he found that if you differentiate a function and then integrate it, then the first function will return. This works the same if you integrate a function and then differentiate it. This was his fundamental theorem of calculus. This discovery made it easier to find areas of objects. This fundamental theorem created a systematic method for all of calculus. This theorem changed the game for mathematics as it paved the way for a whole new type of math that could explain the functions of the universe more easily. Newton himself used these ideas to explain how the planets orbited the sun. Calculus is something that is used today in economics, physics, medicine, astronomy, chemistry, and just about every other area that exists. His remarkable discovery did and has the capability to change the world.
In 1671 he was elected into the Royal Society of London. The Royal Society was (and continues to be) a ‘learned society’ whose purpose was to promote science and improve upon science. During this time, Newton was devoted to his ideas on colors. He believed that colors and light were essential for each other and used his famous prism experiment to prove that there is a color spectrum that is created by light. To further his studies of light and color he created a reflecting telescope. As this was the first reflecting telescope that had ever been made, the Royal Society wanted to see it. The curiosity the Royal Society had for his ideas inspired him to publish them. The events that succeeded his publishing of the paper highlighted how protective he was of his work and how angry he would get if someone opposed him. A rival of his paper, Robert Hooke, harshly critiqued his paper which made Newton livid. He later published another paper on the properties of light and again Hooke critiqued him. He even accused Newton of stealing his own ideas. Newton was so upset by this episode that he withdrew from publishing his ideas for quite some time. His book that did finally share his ideas, Opticks, went unpublished until most of his critics had died. Robert Hooke passed in 1703 and his book was published in 1704. His theory of colors made him butt heads with many people because of what others thought were odd ideas. Newton’s anger when it came to criticism gives insight as to why it took him a long time to publish his ideas on calculus. He was terrified of opposition. It was also during this time with his high stress that Newton suffered what was thought to be his first mental breakdown which was followed by the death of his mother a year later.
During the time that Newton refused to publish more work he turned his mind to his study of alchemy. Alchemy was a form of chemistry and philosophy that was used at the time to try to turn less valuable objects into more valuable ones, such as metals into gold. Newton was very passionate about alchemy and we now know that his study of alchemy influenced some of his later ideas on light and gravity. Some now say that alchemy was Newton’s truest passion. He would stay up nights trying to make sense of all the works on the subject that he was reading. He would copy down the writings of other alchemists over and over again just to make sense of all of their ideas. Although he devoted a lot of his life to alchemy, he never published any of his findings because he feared that if it got out and the philosopher’s stone (a substance believed to turn metals into gold and possibly achieve immortality) was real, people would abuse its powers. Newton was an eccentric man.
Robert Hooke happened to be an influencer in Newton’s life. Newton hated him, but Hooke had the ability to insight great anger and frustration in Newton, but also to quiet him down or make him work even harder. In 1679, Hooke wrote to Newton saying that if a particle was released into the center of the earth, it would make the motion of an ellipse, while Newton thought it would make a spiral. Newton started working on calculations as to the mathematical components of orbits. As usual, he did not publish his findings, but later Edmond Hally was able to convince him to publish. After working on his findings for two years after that Newton published Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy) in 1687.
The Principia, as it later became known, contained several important findings to the study of physics. Included in the publication was Newton’s laws, which were three laws of motion. Newton found that an object at rest stays at rest, a change in motion of an object is proportional to the force put on it, and for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. He also further wrote on the study of orbits. He wrote how planets orbited the sun and he found that the same way planets orbit around the sun must be the way the moon orbits around the earth. A popular story of how he discovered this connection is that he was drinking tea one afternoon while looking out a window when he saw an apple fall to the ground. He realized that the same force that makes something fall to the ground also causes the earth to orbit the sun and the moon to orbit the earth. Although this story may not be true, it is interesting to try to make sense of what was going through Newton’s mind when he put these pieces together. He further wrote on gravitation and how the pull of the moon and the sun contributed to ocean tides. He wrote how every things in the universe was held together by gravitational pulls. In the book, Newton also invented a scientific method that had four rules that must be followed. He first said that the one should not overcomplicate the causes of natural beings other than what is satisfactory. His second rule said that one’s new findings should make sense with accep
ted scientific reasoning. His third rule said that scientific explanations for a phenomena should apply to every occurrence of that phenomena. Finally, his fourth rule stated that scientific theories should be theories should be accepted as true unless proven differently. These rules highlight how Newton’s methods in finding new scientific reasonings was very organized and methodical. The sheer volume of information that he discovered and published in this book has made it considered one of the finest books ever written on physics. There were many amazing things about his publication, first being that he wrote all these ideas simply by the use of mathematical mechanics. Second, that he was able to unearth so much information in a rather short span in his life. He was only in his early forties when it was published and had initially made these discoveries much earlier than that.
After the publication of the Principia, Newton became a respected member of the scientific community. His fame opened him up to more people, as there were numerous of young scientists who now greatly admired his work. Newton liked his solitude, but he did form an intense friendship with Fatio de Duillier which was a completely new experience for him in his life. Newton liked lists and he liked rules, especially when he wrote them himself. However, the nature of his mind started to play tricks on him in 1693 when he suffered a mental breakdown. There are many possible combined reasons for Newton’s breakdown. It could have been is introverted nature, his traumatic relationship with his mother, depression, or it is also speculated that mercury poisoning could have been a cause. His study of alchemy had exposed him to great amounts of mercury, a metal, as discovered after he died in his autopsy. That association perhaps started causing strange things to happen with the mind. Only a few years after his close relationship with Fatio had started, it abruptly ended after Fatio had fallen gravely ill. It is not known why the friendship ended, but only a few months later he had sent letters to his other close friends Samuel Pepys and John Locke that highlighted his madness. In his letter to Pepys he told him that he did not want to ‘see neither you nor the rest of my friends any more.’ To his friend John Locke he accused him pushing him onto women despite Newton’s almost positive celibacy throughout his life. His friends were worried about him as he began to withdraw from more and more of them, but somehow, not long after was he back onto his studies. Whatever the reason for his mental collapse, and although he recovered rather quickly, he returned to the productivity he had experienced in his scientific and mathematical pursuits of the time before. He published again of course, yet most of what he published were of things he wrote before his mental breakdown.
Despite his issues, Isaac Newton was able to throw himself into new work. Newton’s interest in alchemy can be seen in that he took a position in 1696 as the Master of the Royal Mint over becoming a professor at Cambridge. Most people of his intellect would have chosen the latter. He devoted himself to finding counterfeits and finding those who made them. He was a master at this as he discovered that a great number of coins that were collected during the Great Recoinage of 1696 had been counterfeited. He took this job very seriously as before him it had been rather difficult to arrest counterfeiters, but under his mastership he sent a great number to be punished. It is likely that his devotion and seriousness about this job had to do with his passion for alchemy and the misuse of it. As stated earlier, he did not want to publish his works on alchemy as he did not want it to go into the wrong hands of someone who would use it for counterfeiting. He hated thieves and hated to be called a thief.
Despite In 1703, Newton was elected as the President of the Royal Society. Due to his difficult personality, he presided over it rather harshly. Robert Hooke had died that same year and in 1705 he was given the honor of being the first man of science that was knighted by the Queen. All these accomplishments meant he was on top of the world. However, with Hooke’s death, Newton had found a new enemy to battle with in John Flamsteed. As an extremely proud man, Newton was upset and jealous when he realized that he needed Flamsteed’s catalog of stars that he had been measuring to further his own work on lunar theory. He borrowed his work with the promise that he would not publish it, as Flamsteed wanted to have it published on his own. However, Newton forced Flamsteed’s data to be prepared for publishing, using his connections as the President of the Royal Society, but Flamsteed fought back and won back his work before it could be widely published. Newton was furious at being bested by Flamsteed as he was used to being the winner in his arguments or hiding out until he could win. As punishment, he actually excluded any mention of Flamsteed in his later editions of The Principia even though Flamsteed’s work was of help to his own. Newton showed that he could be quite brutal with his enemies.
Newton, no stranger to arguments and disputes, was again embroiled in a dispute with a German mathematician named Gottfried Leibniz over who was truly the person who discovered calculus. Leibniz had published his theory in 1684, while Newton hadn’t published his own ideas officially until the early eighteenth century because he was afraid of criticism. His ideas had been included in his work The Principia, albeit not explicitly. Fury broke out on both sides. Leibniz’s supporter claimed that Newton had stolen Leibniz’s work, while Newton’s supporters claimed that Leibniz had stolen Newton’s. Debates went so far that the Royal Society put forth an investigation into the matter and published a report that accused Leibniz of being the liar and the cheat. Tensions were further heightened when it was discovered that Newton had been the one to write the report. Leibniz died in 1716 giving Newton advantage over his adversary as he had more time to tarnish his image. Now, it is generally believed that neither stole the idea from the other, but they discovered it separately, with Newton being the first. Although it is now accepted that Newton had been the true discoverer, it is Leibniz’s notation that lives on. Newton was a genius, and he knew it. He often withhold information from the public and he was fine with being the only person to understand what he discovered. He had not changed by this time, as his notation of calculus was far less comprehensible than that of Leibniz.
Sir Isaac Newton never lost his religious sensibilities. He even took it upon himself to interpret the prophecies in the Bible. He condemned the many who had put dates on the end of the world, even though he himself wrote in his notebooks that it had to come after the year 2060. He was extremely private and secretive about his work, even more so than usual. This was because he did not believe in the Trinity or that Jesus was God, which at the time, was considered heresy and he could be put to death. Although he originally went to Cambridge to study to be a preacher and later decided to devote himself to mathematics and science, he believed theology and the natural world went hand and hand.
Isaac Newton devoted most of his later life to his job at the Royal Mint, the Royal Society, and in creating new editions of his past works. He remained president of the Royal Society and Master of the Royal Mint until his death. He never regained the productivity of his ideas that he had in his earlier years. His kindness was highlighted in his later life when he allowed his half-sister’s daughter to live with him. Although he accomplished much throughout his lifetime, Newton did not travel far from his birthplace throughout his entire life; his mind had seen much more than the rest of him. He died on March 20, 1727, possibly from Mercury poisoning or simply from old age.
Isaac Newton’s undisputed brilliance perhaps cost him a personal life. He was
interested in so many different pursuits, but none of those were romance or friendships for the most part. He never married, nor ever had children. Most say that he remained celibate for his entire life and never approached women. A cost for him personally, however, meant the world’s benefit, as the he is considered to be possibly the finest mathematician and scientist the world has ever seen. Those were obviously not his only interests however, as he fervently studied both alchemy and theology. He was a man of contradictions. He was a man of science, but also one of God and legends. He was introverted, but with a fiery temper when triggered. With this temper, he was also very kind to those he was close to. Newton was a student and a teacher of many different subjects and what was special about him is that he was brilliant in all of them. Although his personal life was marred by mental illnesses and a harsh personality and reaction to criticism, one thing that cannot be criticised of him is that he was a genius, perhaps the greatest the world has ever known.