Sir Isaac Newton
Hello, my name is Sir Isaac Newton and I am here to describe to you a few facts about myself in hope of creating a greater insight into my works. I will begin my resume at my birth and early years. I was born on Jan. 4, 1643, at Woolsthorpe, near Grantham, Lincolnshire, England. I “attended school in my home town and in 1661 entered Cambridge University and then in 1667 I was elected a Fellow of Trinity College and Lucasian Professor of Mathematics in 1669″ (Newton Encarta). I remained at the university till 1696 and during those years I was mostly lecturing classes. After receiving my degree from college I began to look into the fields of which interested me the most. Astronomy, mathematics, optics, gravitation and other such fields were of my majors and that which I excelled in.
In mathematics I was taught geometry in school, but later in my life I self-taught myself certain other higher aspects of mathematics. I am famous for “solving solutions to the contemporary problems in analytical geometry of drawing tangents to curves (differentiation) and defining areas bounded by curves (integration)” (Newton Encarta). These two important concepts in mathematics I discovered to be inverse of each other and using this principle enabled me to create differential and integral calculus. I did not publish these finding right away, however, I did lecture them at Cambridge University which later lead to them becoming published.
During a two year period I lectured optics at Cambridge University I looked further into “the refraction of light, demonstrating that a prism could decompose white light into a spectrum of colors, and that a lens and a second prism could recompose the multicolored spectrum into white light.” (Isaac Newton Wikipedia) In order to prove my theory that white light was not as simple as a mere single beam I constructed in an experiment showing that there was several different colors in a ray of white light. I constructed my experiment by taking a light of beam and shining the light through a glass prism and observed that the light refracted different colors. The different colors consisted of red, blue, green, yellow, and violet. I argued that white light is really a mixture of many different types of rays, that the different types of rays are refracted at slightly different angles, and that each different type of ray is responsible for producing a given spectral color. (Newton Greenwhich) My experiment confirmed my theory and I selected out of the spectrum a narrow band of light of one color. I sent it through a second prism and observed that no further elongation occurred. All the rays of one color were refracted at the same angle. This experiment also gave people of my time a new approach to discovering truth which was experimenting on ideas and observe the conclusions.
These were not the only two fields I tailored myself to, but these are two fields in which I certainly help scientists and mathematicians alike to a new level of understanding and complex thinking. My works that I published and lectured about, however, are in no way undermining the teachings of the Church and religion. I believe gravity and other such forces holds the planets and objects in place or in motion, but God himself put those objects in place or motion. I would also like to thank the scientists and philosophers before my time that made many of my discoveries possible such as Aristole, Copernicus, Kepler and many more. Without their findings and experiments some of mine may have been impossible.
“Isaac Newton” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. October 25, 2006
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_newton
Alfred Rupert Hall. Isaac Newton’s Life. Microsoft Encarta.
1998. Microsoft Corporation. http://www.newton.cam.ac.uk/newtlife.
Greenwhich Past. Sir Isaac Newton. 07 July 2006. 06 April 2007.
