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Isaac Newton

English mathematician and physicist (1642–1727)

16 dated entries naming Isaac Newton, drawn from 13 separate years between 1665 CE and 1738 CE. Nothing here is written by us: each line is the sentence a Wikipedia year article used, and the link beside it opens the exact revision.

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17th century

  • 1665August 8 – The Great Plague forces the closure of the University of Cambridge, where Isaac Newton is a student. Newton retires to his home in Lincolnshire for safety, and stays there for two years. During this time alone, Newton will make groundbreaking discoveries in mathematics, calculus, mechanics and optics, and lay the foundations for his books Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica and Optiks.source
  • 1666Isaac Newton uses a prism to split sunlight, as referenced in his alchemical works as Lux Dei, into the component colours of the optical spectrum, assisting the understanding of the scientific nature of light. He also develops differential calculus simultaneously with Leibniz. 1666 is consequently referred to as his Annus mirabilis or Newton's "Year of the Morning Star".source
  • 1667Isaac Newton has investigated and written on optics, acoustics, the infinitesimal calculus, mechanism and thermodynamics. The works will be published only years later.source
  • 1668English scientist Isaac Newton builds the first reflecting telescope (Newton's reflector).source
  • 1669February 23 – Isaac Newton writes his first description of his new invention, the reflecting telescope.source
  • 1672February 16 (February 6, 1671 O.S.) – Isaac Newton sends a paper for publication regarding his experiments on the refraction of light through glass prisms and makes the first identification of the "primary colors" of visible light on the electromagnetic spectrum, reporting that "The Original or primary colours are, Red, Yellow, Green, Blew, and a Violet-purple, together with Orange, Indico, and an indefinite variety of Intermediate gradations."source
  • 1672January 11 – The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, national science academy for England, elects Isaac Newton to its membership, and then demonstrates Newton's reflecting telescope to King Charles II.source
  • 1684August – Edmond Halley goes to Cambridge to discuss the problem of planetary motion with Isaac Newton.source
  • 1684December 10 – Isaac Newton's derivation of Kepler's laws from his theory of gravity, contained in the paper De motu corporum in gyrum, is read to the Royal Society by Edmond Halley.source
  • 1684January – Edmond Halley, Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke have a conversation in which Hooke later claimed not only to have derived the inverse-square law, but also all the laws of planetary motion attributed to Sir Isaac Newton. Hooke's claim is that in a letter to Newton on 6 January 1680, he first stated the inverse-square law.source
  • 1687July 11 – Isaac Newton's Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, known as the Principia, is published by the Royal Society of London. In it, Newton describes his law of universal gravitation, explains the laws of mechanics, and gives a formula for the speed of sound. The writing of Principia Mathematica ushers in a tidal wave of changes in thought, significantly accelerating the Scientific Revolution by providing new and practical intellectual tools, and becomes the foundation of modern physics.source

18th century

  • 1703November 30 – Isaac Newton is elected president of the Royal Society of London, a position he will hold until his death in 1727.source
  • 1704Isaac Newton publishes his Opticks. He also predicts that the world will end in 2060.source
  • 1705April 16 – Queen Anne of England honours Isaac Newton with the title of Knight Bachelor at Trinity College, Cambridge.source
  • 1736Sir Isaac Newton's Method of Fluxions (1671), describing his method of differential calculus, is first published (posthumously) and Thomas Bayes publishes a defense of its logical foundations (anonymously).source
  • 1738Pierre Louis Maupertuis publishes Sur la figure de la terre, which confirms Newton's view that the earth is an oblate spheroid, slightly flattened at the poles.source

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