Issac Newton

Isaac Newton's name is known all over the world for his many contributions to the physical, mathematical and astronomical sciences. He was born on December 25, 1642 in Woolsthorpe, England and died on March 20, 1727 in London England. When he was born his father had died and his mother remarried and left him with his grandmother.(Encyclopedia, 2011) He was in and out of school, however, on June 5, 1661, he became a member of the Trinity College in Cambridge and received his Bachelor of Arts in four years of attending.(Encyclopedia, 2011)

Isaac Newton is known as one of the best and most influential person in Astrophysics. Some of his contributions to astronomy are: the reflecting telescope, Newton's Three Laws of Motion; the universal gravitational law, and Principia.

Among his many inventions and other contributions to astronomy, according to Fowler, "Newton's first major public scientific achievement was the invention, design and construction of a reflecting telescope"(Fowler). The fact that he had made every part of the telescope including the tools he worked with shows his creative and inventive mind and his thirst for knowledge. How did this technology help in seeing the vast universe? Well, the reflecting telescope, not only "ensured his election to membership in the Royal Society," Fowler says, "the mirror gave a sharper image" (Fowler). This was a very important invention to minimize the chromatic aberration effect of light, hence giving a better image. This happens "because reflected light does not disperse according to wavelength," and the fact that the reflecting telescope has a shorter tube it makes it more cost effective to make. (Mac OS X Server) Newton's invention of the reflecting telescope gave new eyes to see a much clear and better image of the celestrial matters.

Issac Newton's other also very important contribution to astronomy is what we call "Newton's Three Laws of Motion". His First Law of Motion is very basic. As mentioned in the Physics and Astronomy Department of University of Tennessee's website, the first law says that as long as there is force applied to an object, the object will move in the direction the force is being applied.(Cardall and Daunt) Newton's Second Law of Motion which is the most important one, says that there is a relationship between the mass, velocity and force that is being applied to an object "in this law the direction of the force vector is the same as the direction of the acceleration vector" and the force only changes the velocity of the object and doesn't maintain the velocity.(Cardall and Daunt) Finally the Third Law of Motion says that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. If we take an scale and move the weights from one side to the other the opposite side will arise. Using these laws he was able to demonstrate that anything in the universe