Astrotales

What do the bubonic plague, a nervous breakdown, and failing as a farmer have to do with the greatest scientific publication of all time?

The greatest scientific publication of all time is the Principia, which basically described in practical mathematical terms the modern view of the Universe, which contributed to everything from the Industrial Revolution to Space Travel. The author of the Principia is Isaac Newton - recognized by western civilization as single-handedly contributing more to the development of science than any other individual in history. His biographers describe him as surpassing all the gains of the great scientific minds of antiquity "producing a scheme of the universe which was more consistent, elegant, and intuitive than any proposed before."

Newton was born unto a poor farming family and because he failed as farmer his mother sent him to Cambridge study to become a preacher. Though he was not particularly good at grammar school, Newton was exposed to mathematics and science while at Cambridge. Suddenly, for two years, Cambridge was closed because of the plague. And during this time Newton left these formal studies to make most of the significant discoveries of his lifetime. An introverted man, who never told a joke and never laughed, Newton suffered a massive nervous breakdown in 1675 which took him over 4 years to recover . Despite this, Newton published the Principia in 1687. The Principia included the famous Laws of Motion without which modern space travel would be impossible.

Newton made important contributions to mathematics. In our next installment we'll discover why a feud between Newton and Leibniz held up the study of calculus in England for decades.