Isaac Newton was born in Woolsthorpe, England, in 1642 (1643 on today’s calendar). Small and sickly at birth and raised by his grandmother after his father died, he grew up building models and tinkering with mechanisms, early signs of a mind obsessed with how things work.

At Cambridge University (from 1661), Newton devoured the newest ideas from Europe, including the radical claim that Earth orbits the Sun. When the Great Plague closed the university in 1665–1666, he returned home and entered an intense period of independent work, years he later called his 'annus mirabilis' (miracle years).

During that time, he experimented with light and prisms and reached a breakthrough: white light is not pure but a mixture of colors. This discovery launched modern optics and explained why lenses produced color distortions. To solve that problem, Newton designed the first practical reflecting telescope (1668), using a mirror instead of a lens to produce sharper images, an approach that still powers large observatories today.

Newton wanted to know what kept the Moon from flying off into space. His answer: gravity. Gravity is the universal attraction acting between all masses. He linked gravity with three simple but powerful laws of motion that describe how forces change an object’s speed or direction. These laws turned the motions of apples, cannonballs, moons, and planets into one coherent story.

Calculus was the mathematical language Newton developed to express change precisely, how speeds vary, how orbits curve, how forces accumulate. (German mathematician Gottfried Leibniz developed a similar method independently; both men’s work underpins science and engineering to this day.)

In 1687, urged by astronomer Edmond Halley, Newton published his masterwork, 'Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica' ('Principia'). It showed that the same laws explain tides and comets, falling stones and planetary paths. Few people could read the math, but everyone grasped the message: nature runs on discoverable rules.

Newton’s career stretched beyond the lab. As a professor at Cambridge, president of the Royal Society, and later Master of the Royal Mint, he shaped British science and finance. He also had fierce rivalries (with Robert Hooke and Leibniz), wrote extensively on theology and alchemy, and guarded his reputation, complex traits that remind us great thinkers are fully human.

By the time of his death in 1727, Newton had helped launch the Scientific Revolution into high gear. His ideas didn’t end inquiry; they made deeper inquiry possible. Even after Einstein refined gravity centuries later, engineers, astronauts, and athletes still rely on Newton’s laws to model the real world.

Newton didn’t just describe how things move, he gave the world a toolkit for understanding change itself. His laws and calculus turned the universe into something humans could predict, test, and use, from mapping planets to launching rockets to designing safer cars and bridges. He showed that careful observation plus clear mathematics can unlock patterns that connect a falling apple to the orbit of the Moon. That mindset of evidence first, models that make testable predictions, and the humility to keep refining is the engine of modern science. Newton reminds us that big breakthroughs often grow from quiet persistence and the courage to ask simple questions deeply.