Isaac Newton

Overview

Isaac Newton spent most of his career at Cambridge and later ran the Royal Mint. His Principia of 1687 set out three laws of motion and a law of universal gravitation, and demonstrated that together they account for the orbits of the planets, the motion of comets, the tides, and the shape of the Earth. The achievement was not any single law but the demonstration that terrestrial and celestial motion obey the same rules, which had not been assumed before. He also invented the calculus needed to state the arguments, and in Opticks reported experiments showing that white light is a mixture of colours rather than a pure substance modified by prisms. Read Opticks first: it is written in plain English and describes experiments step by step. The Principia is much harder and is best approached in an English translation with a commentary alongside.

Where to start reading

• Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica 1687

  The three laws of motion and universal gravitation, applied to orbits, tides, and comets. The Gutenberg text linked here is the English translation of the mathematical principles of natural philosophy.

  Read it on Project Gutenberg

• Opticks 1704

  Experiments with prisms and lenses establishing that white light is composed of a spectrum of colours, written in accessible prose with the reasoning laid out experiment by experiment.

  Read it in the library

Part of

• Classical mechanics

Sources

1. Isaac Newton Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
2. Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
3. Isaac Newton Britannica