Daasebre N. Asante
Mr. Nazarro
Honors World History
3/21/13
Isaac Newton Isaac Newton had a huge impact on Europe through his discoveries. His discovery of formulas that could be used to find the areas of curved objects led to many of the mathematical breakthroughs in Europe at the time; as well as discovering the laws of motion and the laws gravity, in the field of science. All of these discoveries by Isaac Newton lead to great new ways of European thinking in Science, Math, and even Theology. Isaac Newton was born on January 4, 1643 in Woolsthorpe, England. His father died three months before he was born, and when he was born he was premature, weak, and tiny, he wasn’t expected to survive for long. When he was three his mother remarried to a minister and left him to his maternal grandmother, he stayed with his grandmother for nine years before finally reuniting with his mother, after her second husband died. Newton was then enrolled into school where he was introduced to chemistry and many other sciences. However, his mother pulled him out of school wanting him to become a famer. Newton found farming to be very tedious so after much consult with his mother he was allowed to return to school to finish his basic education. Sensing Newton’s potential intellectually, his uncle (who was a graduate of the Trinity College) persuaded Newton’s mother to have him enter college. During his first few years at Cambridge, Newton was learning was being taught the standard curriculum, but he was actually much more fascinated with the more advanced science and spent a lot of time doing his own studies on these more advanced subjects1. Newton graduated with no honors or distinctions; however he won the title of scholar and four years of financial support for future education. In 1987 Newton published, what is described as the most influential book on physics and perhaps all of science, The Principia. The book contains information on all the essential concepts of physics as well as Newton’s Laws of motion which are, 1. A stationary body will stay stationary unless an external force is applied to it; 2. Force is equal to mass times acceleration, and a change in motion is proportional to the force applied; and 3) for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. The Principia is a great example of a way that Newton’s discoveries in science really lead to great new way of European thinking. The Three Laws of Motion were able to change the understanding of the Universe as well as they became the foundation of Physics know as classical mechanics, they were the first set of laws that described the motion of all things in our universe. Newton had a great interest in the motion of planets, and he used his laws of motion, as well as Johannes Kepler’s Laws of Planetary motion, to prove the heliocentric model of the universe presented by Nicholas Copernicus. All these discoveries in science became the basis for European understanding of how the universe functions and why it is the way it is. In addition to his great discoveries in science, Newton also made very important discoveries in mathematics. Newton came up with the Binomial Theorem and was one of the two creators of calculus. Newton wrote The Universal Arithmetic, which was able to help advance his theory of equations, he also wrote many papers about calculus, curves, optics, and geometry. Yet, many of these works went unpublished until long after they had been written. This is what caused him to have to share the honor of creating calculus, though Newton had discovered