---
title: "Isaac Newton"
chunk: 17/17
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:07:12.165802+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

In the year 1666 he retired again from Cambridge to his mother in Lincolnshire. Whilst he was pensively meandering in a garden it came into his thought that the power of gravity (which brought an apple from a tree to the ground) was not limited to a certain distance from earth, but that this power must extend much further than was usually thought. Why not as high as the Moon said he to himself & if so, that must influence her motion & perhaps retain her in her orbit, whereupon he fell a calculating what would be the effect of that supposition.
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, as other scientists had already conjectured. Around 1665, Newton made quantitative analysis, considering the period and distance of the Moon's orbit and considering the timing of objects falling on Earth. Newton did not publish these results at the time because he could not prove that the Earth's gravity acts as if all its mass were concentrated at its center. That proof took him twenty years.
Detailed analysis of historical accounts backed up by dendrochronology and DNA analysis indicate that the sole apple tree in a garden at Woolsthorpe Manor was the tree Newton described. The tree blew over in at storm sometime around 1816, regrew from its roots, and continues as a tourist attraction under the care of the National Trust.
A descendant of the original tree can be seen growing outside the main gate of Trinity College, Cambridge, below the room Newton lived in when he studied there. The National Fruit Collection at Brogdale in Kent can supply grafts from their tree, which appears identical to Flower of Kent, a coarse-fleshed cooking variety.

=== Commemorations ===

Newton's monument (1731) can be seen in Westminster Abbey, at the north of the entrance to the choir against the choir screen, near his tomb. It was executed by the sculptor Michael Rysbrack (1694–1770) in white and grey marble with design by the architect William Kent. The monument features a figure of Newton reclining on top of a sarcophagus, his right elbow resting on several of his great books and his left hand pointing to a scroll with a mathematical design. Above him is a pyramid and a celestial globe showing the signs of the Zodiac and the path of the comet of 1680. A relief panel depicts putti using instruments such as a telescope and prism.
From 1978 until 1988, an image of Newton designed by Harry Ecclestone appeared on Series D £1 banknotes issued by the Bank of England (the last £1 notes to be issued by the Bank of England). Newton was shown on the reverse of the notes holding a book and accompanied by a telescope, a prism and a map of the Solar System.
A statue of Isaac Newton, looking at an apple at his feet, can be seen at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. A large bronze statue, Newton, after William Blake, by Eduardo Paolozzi, dated 1995 and inspired by William Blake's etching, dominates the piazza of the British Library in London. A bronze statue of Newton was erected in 1858 in the centre of Grantham where he went to school, prominently standing in front of Grantham Guildhall.
The manor house at Woolsthorpe is a Grade I listed building by Historic England through being his birthplace and "where he discovered gravity and developed his theories regarding the refraction of light".
The Institute of Physics, or IOP, has its highest and most prestigious award, the Isaac Newton Medal, named after Newton, which is given for world-leading contributions to physics. It was first awarded in 2008.

== The Enlightenment ==
It is held by European philosophers of the Enlightenment and by historians of the Enlightenment that Newton's publication of the Principia was a turning point in the Scientific Revolution and started the Enlightenment. It was Newton's conception of the universe based upon natural and rationally understandable laws that became one of the seeds for Enlightenment ideology. John Locke and Voltaire applied concepts of natural law to political systems advocating intrinsic rights; the physiocrats and Adam Smith applied natural conceptions of psychology and self-interest to economic systems; and sociologists criticised the current social order for trying to fit history into natural models of progress. James Burnett, Lord Monboddo and Samuel Clarke resisted elements of Newton's work, but eventually rationalised it to conform with their strong religious views of nature.

== Works ==

=== Published in his lifetime ===
De analysi per aequationes numero terminorum infinitas (1669, published 1711)
Of Natures Obvious Laws & Processes in Vegetation (unpublished, c. 1671–75)
De motu corporum in gyrum (1684)
Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687)
Scala graduum Caloris. Calorum Descriptiones & signa (1701)
Opticks (1704)
Reports as Master of the Mint (1701–1725)
Arithmetica Universalis (1707)

=== Published posthumously ===
De mundi systemate (The System of the World) (1728)
Optical Lectures (1728)
The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended (1728)
Observations on Daniel and The Apocalypse of St. John (1733)
Method of Fluxions (1671, published 1736)
An Historical Account of Two Notable Corruptions of Scripture (1754)

== See also ==
Elements of the Philosophy of Newton, a book by Voltaire
List of multiple discoveries: seventeenth century
List of presidents of the Royal Society
List of things named after Isaac Newton

== References ==

=== Notes ===

=== Citations ===

=== Bibliography ===

== Further reading ==

=== Primary ===

=== Alchemy further reading ===

=== Religion ===

=== Science ===

== External links ==

"Archival material relating to Isaac Newton". UK National Archives. 
Portraits of Sir Isaac Newton at the National Portrait Gallery, London 
Works by Isaac Newton at Project Gutenberg
Works by or about Isaac Newton at the Internet Archive
Works by Isaac Newton at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks) 

=== Digital archives ===
The Newton Project from University of Oxford
Newton's papers in the Royal Society archives
The Newton Manuscripts at the National Library of Israel
Newton Papers (currently offline) from Cambridge Digital Library
Bernhardus Varenius, Geographia Generalis, ed. Isaac Newton, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Joann. Hayes, 1681) from the Internet Archive