---
title: "Isaac Newton"
chunk: 16/17
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"
---

On one assessment there should be no doubt: Newton was the greatest creative genius physics has ever seen. None of the other candidates for the superlative (Einstein, Maxwell, Boltzmann, Gibbs, and Feynman) has matched Newton's combined achievements as theoretician, experimentalist, and mathematician.Albert Einstein kept a picture of Newton on his study wall alongside ones of Michael Faraday and of James Clerk Maxwell. Einstein stated that Newton's creation of calculus in relation to his laws of motion was "perhaps the greatest advance in thought that a single individual was ever privileged to make." He also noted the influence of Newton, stating that:The whole evolution of our ideas about the processes of nature, with which we have been concerned so far, might be regarded as an organic development of Newton's ideas.In 1999, an opinion poll of 100 of the day's leading physicists voted Einstein the "greatest physicist ever," with Newton the runner-up, while a parallel survey of rank-and-file physicists ranked Newton as the greatest. In 2005, a dual survey of the public and members of Britain's Royal Society asked two questions: who made the bigger overall contributions to science and who made the bigger positive contributions to humankind, with the candidates being Newton or Einstein. In both groups, and for both questions, the consensus was that Newton had made the greater overall contributions.
In 1999 Time magazine named Newton the Person of the Century for the 17th century. Newton placed sixth in the 100 Greatest Britons poll conducted by BBC in 2002. However, in 2003, he was voted as the greatest Briton in a poll conducted by BBC World, with Winston Churchill second. He was voted as the greatest Cantabrigian by University of Cambridge students in 2009.
The physicist Lev Landau ranked physicists on a logarithmic scale of productivity and genius ranging from 0 to 5. The highest ranking, 0, was assigned to Newton. Einstein was ranked 0.5. A rank of 1 was awarded to the fathers of quantum mechanics, such as Werner Heisenberg and Paul Dirac. Landau, a Nobel prize winner and the discoverer of superfluidity, ranked himself as 2.
The SI derived unit of force is named the newton in his honour.
Most of Newton's surviving scientific and technical papers are kept at Cambridge University. Cambridge University Library has the largest collection and there are also papers in Kings College, Trinity College, and the Fitzwilliam Museum. There is an archive of theological and alchemical papers in the National Library of Israel, and smaller collections at the Smithsonian Institution, Stanford University Library, and the Huntington Library. The Royal Society in London also has some manuscripts. The Israel collection was inscribed by UNESCO on its Memory of the World International Register in 2015, recognising the global significance of the documents. The Cambridge and Royal Society collections were added to this inscription in 2017.

=== Apple story ===

Newton often told the story that he was inspired to formulate his theory of gravitation by watching the fall of an apple from a tree. The story is believed to have passed into popular knowledge after being related by Catherine Barton, Newton's niece, to Voltaire. Voltaire then wrote in his Essay on Epic Poetry (1727), "Sir Isaac Newton walking in his gardens, had the first thought of his system of gravitation, upon seeing an apple falling from a tree."
Although some question the veracity of the apple story, acquaintances of Newton attribute the story to Newton himself, though not the apocryphal version that the apple actually hit Newton's head. William Stukeley, whose manuscript account of 1752 has been made available by the Royal Society, recorded a conversation with Newton in Kensington on 15 April 1726:

we went into the garden, & drank thea under the shade of some appletrees, only he, & myself. amidst other discourse, he told me, he was just in the same situation, as when formerly, the notion of gravitation came into his mind. "why should that apple always descend perpendicularly to the ground," thought he to him self: occasion'd by the fall of an apple, as he sat in a comtemplative mood: "why should it not go sideways, or upwards? but constantly to the earths centre? assuredly, the reason is, that the earth draws it. there must be a drawing power in matter. & the sum of the drawing power in the matter of the earth must be in the earths center, not in any side of the earth. therefore dos this apple fall perpendicularly, or toward the center. if matter thus draws matter; it must be in proportion of its quantity. therefore the apple draws the earth, as well as the earth draws the apple."
John Conduitt, Newton's assistant at the Royal Mint and husband of Newton's niece, also described the event when he wrote about Newton's life: