Newton

Author: Dong Yan
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-01-01
Features: The "Biographies of World Famous Figures" series meticulously selects 31 world-renowned figures who have influenced the progress of human civilization in the fields of science and technology, culture and art, and education. Based on historical facts and catering to the reading habits of teenagers, the series introduces the life experiences, ideals, and brilliant achievements of these famous individuals in a vivid and lively yet rigorous and delicate manner. The series is carefully structured and designed with knowledge sections such as "Quotations," "Appreciation of Famous Passages," and "Chronology," accompanied by detailed historical photographs and rich knowledge links, making the books more readable and collectible. He discovered the law of universal gravitation from the phenomenon of an apple falling from a tree, and he taught humanity how to think. He was a great scientist and also a loyal servant of God. He studied science originally only to understand how God's creation of the universe operated. Like a child playing on a beach happily searching for shells, he unintentionally created the brilliance of science. This book is a biographical reading material. It vividly records the life of Sir Isaac Newton, the great 17th-century British scientist. Newton was born in a remote village and was the illegitimate son of a farmer. His poor childhood made him shy and lonely. A teacher once predicted, "This child will surely grow up to be a very dull and foolish person." Yet, this quiet, taciturn child who enjoyed making wooden toys later, through his own genius and diligence, discovered the law of universal gravitation and the three laws of motion, made significant contributions to the advancement of human science in many fields such as mathematics, astronomy, optics, and thermodynamics, and became a scientific giant respected worldwide.
Isaac Newton (1642–1727), an English physicist, astronomer, and mathematician, was born in Lincolnshire. In astronomy, in 1672, Newton invented the reflecting telescope. He also explained the phenomenon of tides, pointing out that their size is not only related to the phases of the moon but also to the gravitational pull of the sun. Additionally, Newton theoretically predicted that the Earth is not a perfect sphere but slightly flattened at the poles and bulging at the equator, which explained the phenomenon of precession.
In physics, based on the work of Galileo, Kepler, and others, Newton established three fundamental laws of motion and the law of universal gravitation, as well as the theoretical framework of classical mechanics. In mathematics, Newton formulated the "Binomial Theorem" and, almost simultaneously with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, developed calculus. In optics, Newton discovered that white sunlight is composed of different colored lights and invented the "Newton color wheel." Regarding the nature of light, Newton proposed the "corpuscular theory of light." In his work Principia Mathematica, Newton mathematically explained Copernicus's heliocentric theory and the phenomena of celestial motion.
Newton's contributions to humanity are immense, as Engels said: "Newton founded scientific astronomy by discovering the law of universal gravitation; he founded scientific optics by decomposing light; he founded scientific mathematics by establishing the binomial theorem and the theory of infinite series; and he founded scientific mechanics by understanding the nature of force." To commemorate Newton's contributions, the International Astronomical Union decided to name the minor planet 662 as "Newton."