Happy 367th Birthday Sir Isaac Newton

Sir Isaac Newton (4 January 1643 – 31 March 1727) was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist, and theologian who is perceived and considered by a substantial number of scholars and the general public as one of the most influential scientists in history.

His 1687 publication of the Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (usually called the Principia) is considered to be among the most influential books in the history of science, laying the groundwork for most of classical mechanics. In this work, Newton described universal gravitation and the three laws of motion which dominated the scientific view of the physical universe for the next three centuries.

Newton showed that the motions of objects on Earth and of celestial bodies are governed by the same set of natural laws by demonstrating the consistency between Kepler's laws of planetary motion and his theory of gravitation, thus removing the last doubts about heliocentrism and advancing the scientific revolution.

"I do not know what I may appear to the world,

but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy

playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself

in now and then finding a smoother pebble

or a prettier shell than ordinary,

whilst the great ocean of truth

lay all undiscovered before me."

Sir Isaac Newton


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