Sir Isaac Newton, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Thomas Hobbes

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Isaac Newton

Isaac Newton was born in 1642, the same year Galileo died, in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England on Christmas Day. He is considered one of the greatest scientists in history. As an English mathematician and physicist, Newton made important contributions to many fields of science. His discoveries and theories laid the foundation for much of the progress in science since his time. The three most important offerings of Newton are solving the mystifications of light and optics, formulating his three laws of motion, and deriving from them the law of universal gravitation. Also he contributed so much to the fields of mathematics too.

While he was still a student at Cambridge University in 1664, he had a great interest in the mysteries of light,optic, and colors. He read the works of Robert Boyle, Robert Hooks, and also René Descartes for some motivation. He investigated the refraction of light by passing a beam of sunlight through a type of prism, which split the beam into separate colors reflecting a rainbow.Over a few years in series of elaborate experiments, Newton discovered measurable, mathematical patterns in the phenomenon of color. In 1672, Newton sent a brief summary of his theory of colors to the Royal Society in London but it only led to a number of criticisms in publication that hurt him greatly and maybe stopped his study at Cambridge. But in 1704, Newton published Opticks, which explained his theories in great detail.

Newton's three laws of motion and the law of universal gravitation are by far the most important scientific works in his life. After his criticism of light and optics, Edmund Halley, a British astronomer and mathematician, went to discuss with Newton orbital motion. Newton already had an attraction in universal gravitation so thanks to Halley's visit, Newton went back to those studies. During the next couple years, with the help of the German astronomer Johannes Kepler's laws of orbital motion, Newton formulated his own three laws of motion. And from these three laws, Newton derived the law of universal gravitation which explained that all bodies in space and on earth are affected by the force called gravity. Probably the greatest book of Isaac Newton is Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica which he published in 1687 explaining his theory of universal gravitation. Principia, which most people call it, is definitely a turning point in the history of science.

Newton's three laws of motion are:

1) an object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion unless acted upon by an unbalanced force

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