Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Sir Isaac Newton



Sir Isaac Newton (4 January 1643 – 31 March 1727) -
      Sir Isaac Newton was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist, and theologian.

 

 

 

Newton's apple - Newton himself often told the story that he was inspired to formulate his theory of gravitation by watching the fall of an apple from a tree.

Cartoons have gone further to suggest the apple actually hit Newton's head, and that its impact somehow made him aware of the force of gravity. It is known from his notebooks that Newton was grappling in the late 1660s with the idea that terrestrial gravity extends, in an inverse-square proportion, to the Moon; however it took him two decades to develop the full-fledged theory.




Reputed descendants of Newton's apple tree, at the Botanic Gardens in Cambridge and the Instituto Balseiro library garden





     

1 comment:

  1. Ha ha, well if the man says so himself it must be true. The apple falling did inspire him, though wouldn't it be more exciting if the apple had really hit his head?

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