In this episode of Thinking in English, I want to explore the life, work, and legacy of Isaac Newton.
We’ll look at his most important discoveries, some of the controversies and mysteries that surrounded his life, and ask the big question: is Newton really the greatest scientific mind of all time?
Whether you’re interested in history, science, or just want to improve your English while learning something fascinating, I think you will enjoy this episode!
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Vocabulary
- Optics (Noun): The study of light and how it behaves.
- Newton’s work in optics changed our understanding of light and colours
- Mathematics (Noun): The study of numbers, shapes, and their relationships.
- Newton used mathematics, especially calculus, to explain natural laws more clearly.
- Calculus (Noun): A type of math that studies change and motion.
- Newton, along with Leibniz, helped create calculus, which changed how we understand math.
- Force (Noun): A push or pull that can change an object’s movement.
- Newton’s second law says that force is equal to an object’s mass times its acceleration.
- Gravity (Noun): The force that pulls objects towards each other, like how things fall to the ground.
- Newton’s law of gravity explains how gravity keeps planets in motion.
- Alchemy (Noun): An old practice that tried to turn metals into gold and find life-changing substances.
- Newton studied alchemy for many years, though it is now seen as a false science.
- Universal (Adjective): Something that applies everywhere or to everything.
- Newton’s laws of motion and gravity apply to everything, from falling apples to planets.
Introduction
In December, I visited Cambridge (home of the famous university). Cambridge is a beautiful place, and I really recommend visiting if you ever have the opportunity.
While in Cambridge, we noticed a crowd of people taking pictures of a tree. As I got closer, and I read the sign, it became clear why they were taking photos. It was supposedly the apple tree where Isaac Newton discovered gravity.
When you think of history’s greatest scientists, I think Isaac Newton has to be in the discussion. He’s the man who formulated the laws of motion, explained gravity, invented calculus, and changed our understanding of light. His discoveries form the foundation of modern physics and mathematics.
Even today, centuries later, his work is taught in classrooms and used in science and engineering.
Newton’s Early Life and Education
Isaac Newton was born on December 25th, 1642, in a small village in Lincolnshire, England.
Newton’s early life wasn’t easy. His father died before he was born. He was born prematurely (meaning too early) and was lucky to survive. When he was just three years old, his mother remarried and left Isaac to be raised by his grandparents.
He attended The King’s School in Grantham, where he learned Latin, Greek, and basic mathematics. But he was an average student at first. It wasn’t until he was older that his teachers began to notice his talent for thinking deeply and logically.
At age 18, he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, one of the most prestigious universities in England. At the time, the official curriculum at Cambridge was still based on the ancient ideas of Aristotle. Newton, however, also studied the works of more modern thinkers, like Descartes, Kepler, and Galileo, on his own.
In 1665, the Black Death or the Plague swept through London and England. The university closed, and Newton returned to his family home in the countryside.
Instead of wasting this time, Newton probably used his pandemic experience more productively than almost anyone in history.
This period is now known as Newton’s “Annus Mirabilis,” or “year of wonders.” During this short time in isolation, Newton made huge discoveries in calculus, optics, and gravity.
Discoveries in Optics and Light
While Isaac Newton is most famous for his work on gravity and motion (which we’ll soon talk about), some of his earliest major scientific breakthroughs came in a completely different field: optics. Optics is the study of light.
At the time, many scientists believed that white light was pure. There was no colour in light. They believed that colours appeared only when the light was changed or “corrupted” by passing through something like glass or air.
Newton wasn’t satisfied with this explanation, so he decided to experiment for himself.
Using a glass prism, Newton passed a beam of sunlight through it. The light split into a rainbow of colours: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. This proved that white light was not pure at all but actually made up of many colours combined.
To test this idea further, Newton then passed the rainbow-coloured light through a second prism, and the light came back together to form white again.
This was a groundbreaking discovery. Newton had proven that colour is built into light, and his experiments laid the foundation for modern physics, photography, and our understanding of vision.
Newton also turned his attention to telescopes. At the time, most telescopes used lenses to bend light. Newton invented something completely new: the reflecting telescope.
Newton used a curved mirror to gather and focus light. This design is still used in most large telescopes today.
Inventing Calculus
One of Isaac Newton’s most incredible, and controversial, contributions to the world of mathematics is calculus.
Calculus is the branch of mathematics that deals with change. It allows us to calculate things like speed, acceleration, area under curves, rates of growth, and more. Without calculus, we wouldn’t have modern physics and engineering.
What makes Newton’s achievement even more amazing is that he invented calculus in his early twenties, during his time away from Cambridge because of the plague. While isolated in the countryside, Newton developed a set of mathematical tools to help him describe motion, change, and the behaviour of physical systems.
He didn’t call it calculus at the time; he referred to it as “the method of fluxions.” He used it to solve problems related to falling objects, planetary motion, and changing quantities.
At around the same time, a German mathematician named Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz also developed calculus, entirely independently. While Newton was working privately and writing in notebooks, Leibniz was publishing his ideas and spreading them across Europe. Because of this, many people assumed that Leibniz invented it first.
This led to a bitter and long-lasting dispute between the supporters of Newton and the supporters of Leibniz. Each side accused the other of plagiarism. It became one of the most famous academic feuds in history.
Today, most historians agree that both men developed calculus independently. They simply used different approaches. The version invented by Leibniz is the one we still use today in schools and universities, because it’s considered clearer.
Despite the controversy, Newton’s invention of calculus allowed him to write equations that could predict motion and explain gravity.
The Laws of Motion and Universal Gravitation
While his work in mathematics and optics alone would be probably be enough to consider Newton one of the greatest minds of all time, these are not what he is best known for.
In 1687, Newton published one of the most important books in the history of science: Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, often just called the Principia.
In it, he laid out the mathematical laws that govern the motion of objects and described how everything in the universe is held together by a single, invisible force: gravity.
Let’s start with his Three Laws of Motion. These are principles that many of us learn in school.
- First Law – The Law of Inertia: An object will remain at rest or move in a straight line at constant speed unless acted upon by an external force. In simple terms, things keep doing what they’re doing—unless something changes that.
- Second Law – F = ma: Force equals mass times acceleration. This equation tells us how much force is needed to move something, and it’s the basis for almost all modern physics and engineering.
- Third Law – Action and Reaction: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Push on something, and it pushes back.
These three laws describe how everything moves and behaves. They gave scientists and engineers a framework to predict and understand the physical world.
But Newton didn’t stop there.
Perhaps his most famous idea is universal gravitation. Before Newton, people knew that things fall, and that planets move, but they didn’t know why. Newton realised that the same force pulling an apple to the ground is also the force that keeps the Moon in orbit around the Earth, and the Earth orbiting the Sun.
He called this force gravity and developed a mathematical formula to describe it. His law of gravitation explained that every object in the universe pulls on every other object.
This was a revolutionary idea. For the first time in history, someone had shown that the same rules apply to both the Earth and the rest of the universe. He showed that the universe follows a unified set of laws.
The Principia was a monumental work. It changed science forever and laid the groundwork for classical physics, which remained dominant for more than 200 years, until Einstein came along.
Later Life and Other Interests
After revolutionising science with his theories of motion, gravity, optics, and mathematics, Newton had a career change.
In 1696, he was appointed Warden of the Royal Mint and later promoted to Master of the Mint. Basically, he was in charge of making money and coins in England.
Newton took this job very seriously, leaving Cambridge and working full time at the mint. At the time, counterfeit money (fake coins) was a huge problem in England. Newton personally investigated counterfeiters, interviewed suspects, and helped reform the British currency system.
Thanks to Newton’s reforms, England’s coins became more standardised and trustworthy. He dedicated the last few decades of his life to making England’s coins the most accurate in the world. He used new technology to make it harder to “clip” coins (clipping is where criminals would cut tiny amounts of gold and silver off the edges of coins and then sell the valuable metals).
During this time, Newton also served as President of the Royal Society which is one of the most prestigious scientific organisations in the world.
Not all of Newton’s interests were so practical or rational. In fact, Newton wrote far more about alchemy than he wrote about mathematics or physics.
Alchemy is the medieval belief system that aimed to transform metals into gold and discover the “elixir of life.” Today, we see alchemy as a pseudoscience, but in Newton’s time it was taken seriously by many intellectuals.
Newton was also fascinated by biblical prophecy and spent years trying to decode hidden messages in religious texts. He believed he could predict the future by finding these hidden messages.
Newton was a Christian, but a very unusual Christian for the time. He didn’t accept the main Christian beliefs at the time. This nearly cost him his career – he had to get special permission to work at Cambridge because his beliefs were against Cambridge’s religious teachings.
Newton never married and he was known to be deeply private.
He died in 1727, at the age of 84, and was buried in Westminster Abbey
Final Thought: Is He the Greatest Scientific Mind Ever?
After everything we’ve discussed, the laws of motion, universal gravitation, the invention of calculus, his work in optics, and his role in modernising coins, the question remains: Is Isaac Newton the greatest scientific mind of all time?
Newton’s discoveries laid the foundation for almost all of classical physics, and his impact on fields like mathematics, astronomy, and even economics has been profound. But to call him the greatest mind ever is difficult.
Newton created a unified theory of the natural world. He connected the laws of motion on Earth to the movements of space. His development of calculus allowed future generations of scientists and mathematicians to dive deeper into understanding the universe. His work continues to be the cornerstone of modern physics.
However, can we say he’s the greatest? The history of science is filled with other minds who also transformed the way we see the world.
Albert Einstein, for instance. Einstein’s theories of relativity altered our understanding of time, space, and gravity. He showed us that Newtonian physics, though groundbreaking, only explained a part of the picture. Einstein’s work challenged many of Newton’s ideas, especially when it came to the concept of gravity.
Then there’s Marie Curie, whose work in radioactivity has led to life-saving medical treatments and deeper understanding in both physics and chemistry. Or Charles Darwin, whose theory of evolution by natural selection reshaped our understanding of biology.
Each of these scientists made groundbreaking discoveries that opened doors to entire new fields of inquiry.
What do you think? Is Newton the greatest of all time, or just one of the greatest?
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I think Newton is one of the greatest scientists but he is the most important person. Because the following scientists were affected by his works and improved the theories of Newton. Thus, we understand better the world now.