NEWTON Isaac

Biography:

Isaac NEWTON was born in England, and his father died three months before he was born. His mother remarried when he was 2, and he was raised by his grandmother under the guardianship of his uncle. A mediocre secondary school student, his mother called him back to the Woolsthorpe estate where he was born, so that he could become its administrator and learn the farming trade. He was admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge, at the age of 18, where he studied arithmetic, geometry and trigonometry. He also took a personal interest in astronomy and alchemy. At the age of 25, he obtained a bachelor's degree in arts, but the plague epidemic (1665) put a stop to his studies for 2 years and he returned to live on the estate. This period was very beneficial for him, as he made progress in mathematics, physics and optics. He discovered that light is composed of a colored spectrum, not white. The episode of the apple falling on his head from a tree, revealing the laws of universal gravitation, dates from this period. At the age of 26, he developed a telescope with a spherical mirror free of chromatic aberration.