Sir Issac Newton made fundamental contributions to every major area of science and math. His advances in optics, physic and astronomy are considered revolutionary. Knighted by Queen Anne in 1708 for his contributions, he was the first scientist to be given this honor.
Born on Jan. 4, 1642, in Woolsthrope, Lingshire, Sir Isaac Newton was raised by his grandmother. His genuis did not surface until the summer of 1665 when a plague hit and the university was closed. It was at this time he invented calculus. Newton produced simple analytical methods that unified many separate techniques previously developed to solve apparaently unrelated problems such as finding areas, tangents, lengths if curves, as well as the maxima and minima of functions.
From 1667 to 1687, Newton served as a Lucasian professor at Cambridge. His first work at this post dealt with optics. He discovered that white light was not a simple entity but instead many different rays rerefracted at slightly different angles.
His greatest achievement is considered by many to be found in his physic work and celestial mechanics discoveries which concluded with the theory of univerisal gravation. This theory proves the Earth's gravity influences the movement of the moon.
In 1693, Newton suffered a nervous breakdown and retired from research. He worked for the government until his death on March 31, 1727 in London, England.
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