newton, sir isaac

See Newton’s law of gravitation Newton’s laws of motion.

1. English mathematician and scientist. He invented a form of calculus and formulated principles of physics that remained basically unchallenged until the work of Albert Einstein, including the law of universal gravitation, a theory of the nature of light, and three laws of motion. His treatise on gravitation, presented in Principia Mathematica (1687), was in his own account inspired by the sight of a falling apple.