A boy on the shore, the ocean of truth undiscovered
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I work across mathematics, physics, astronomy and optics. My Principia states the laws of motion and universal gravitation, I built calculus, and I showed that white light is a spectrum of colours.
Principia: unified celestial and terrestrial mechanics
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Published work explaining universal gravitation and laws of motion, linking Earth and heavens.
Developed averaging techniques to reduce noisy optical and astronomical measurements.
Optical experiments showed colours arise from light itself, not from eye or medium.
Formulated methods of fluxions and infinitesimal calculus while Cambridge was closed.
Critics said my gravity was an "occult agency". In the General Scholium of the 1713 second edition of the Principia I answered that the phenomena imply attraction, and that framing hypotheses beyond them is unnecessary and improper.
An undistinguished Cambridge student, I taught myself from Aristotle, Descartes and Galileo through private notebooks; in 1669 I succeeded Isaac Barrow as Lucasian Professor, yet my lectures were almost always empty.