Universal Gravitation visualized and The Greatest scientist of all time

Universal Gravitation visualized and The Greatest scientist of all time

In the 1600’s, everything was a miracle. People believed in magic, curses, astrology and spells. It was commonly to think earth was 6000 years old. And they had other crazy ideas too.

20th century scientists like Einstein and Bohr, and even 19th century scientists like Maxwell had a body of scientific work that they could build upon. They could stand on the shoulders of other great scientists. Newton, however, had almost no shoulders to stand on.

Newton had 4 major accomplishments:

1) Developed calculus

2) Discovered many of the laws of optics

3) Developed the laws of motion

4) Derived the universal law of gravitation

Any one of these accomplishments is Nobel-prize worthy, and would have put Newton among the greatest scientists who ever lived. But to have done all four is staggering.

And, Newton came up with the theoretical basis of all of these accomplishments in a period of only 18 months. Newton published it 20 years later in 1687 – in an epic landmark book of physics called Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (filo-sofi-eye Na-tur-alis Prink-ee-pee-ah Mathematica) or Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy.