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Sir Isaac Newton
(December 25, 1642 - March 20, 1727) U.K.

Isaac Newton

Mathematician, scientist, and alchemist

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Isaac NewtonBorn at Woolsthorpe by Colsterworth, Lincolnshire; died in London, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

He has been described as one of the three great mathematicians (with Archimedes and Gauss).

Newton was educated at Grantham Grammar School and Trinity College Cambridge.

He returned to Woolsthorpe by Colsterworth when Cambridge University was closed down in 1665 or 1666 because of the Great Plague.

Newton became a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge in 1667.

He was appointed Lucasian Professor of Mathematics in 1669.

By 1684 he had demonstrated the whole gravitation theory.

His Three Laws of Motion:

  1. Every body continues in its state of rest, or in uniform motion in a right line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces theron.
  2. An applied force is directly proportional to the acceleration it induces, the constant of proportionality being the body's mass (F = ma).
  3. For every 'action' force which one body exerts on another, there is an equal and opposite 'reaction' force exerted by the second body on the first.

Newton won a seat in the Convention parliament (1689-90). In 1696 he was appointed Warden of the Mint, and then Master of the Mint from 1699. He sat for parliament for Cambridge University again in 1701. Newton was knighted by Queen Anne in 1705.

The greatest love affair of his life was with a fellow mathematician, Fatio de Duillier. They lived together for several years.

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