Albert Einstein

"Gravity cannot be held responsible for people falling in love." -- Albert Einstein

"When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, it seems like two minutes. When you sit on a hot stove for two minutes, it seems like two hours. That's relativity." -- Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, Germany on March 14, 1879 to non practicing Jewish parents Hermann and Pauline. They moved to Munich and then to Milan. He had not finished secondary school and failed an exam to allow him to study electrical engineering at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. He spent the next year in Aarau, Switzerland and finished high school. Einstein returned in 1896 to the Swiss Institute. In 1898 he fell in love with a Hungarian classmate, Mileva Maric, and in 1900 graduated as a secondary school teacher of mathematics and physics. He became a Swiss citizen in 1901 and avoided Swiss military service on the grounds that he had flat feet and varicose veins.

 In January 1902 Mileva had a daughter Lieserl at her parents home in Hungary, but they put her up for adoption and she disappeared from the records. He worked at the Swiss patent office in Bern from 1902-1909 and completed a number of publications in theoretical physics, written in his spare time without close contact with scientific literature or colleagues. In 1905 Einstein earned a doctorate from the University of Zurich for a thesis 'On a new determination of molecular dimensions' and his Special Theory of Relativity was born. On June 30th, he submitted his paper, "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" to the leading German physics journal. At age 26, he formulated the equation e=mc2. In 1908 he sent a second paper to the University of Bern and became a lecturer there. Einstein then became associate professor of physics at the University of Zurich. In that period Einstein’s father died 1902, he married Mileva 1903 and they had a son Hans Albert 1904. A second son Eduard was born in 1910. In 1911 they move to Prague and on to Zurich in 1912.

Einstein was recognized throughout German-speaking Europe as a leading scientific thinker and went on to professorships at the German University of Prague and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. In 1914 he took up the most prestigious and best-paying professorship at the Kaiser-Wilhelm Gesellschaft in Berlin. Albert and Mileva divorced in1914, WWI began and the following year he completed the General Theory of Relativity. In 1917 he nearly died, but was nursed back to health by his cousin, Elsa whom he married on May 29, 1919. That year British eclipse expeditions confirmed his predictions, Einstein was mobbed by the popular press and The London Times ran the headline on 7 November 1919:-

'Revolution in science - New theory of the Universe - Newtonian ideas overthrown.'

 He was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 1922. At 53 his is identified as a Jew and he began to feel the effect of Nazi Germany, so in 1933 they moved to Princeton in the United States, but Elsa died in 1936. When WWII began Einstein wrote to President Franklin D. Roosevelt warning that Germany could develop an atomic bomb and urged him to undertake nuclear research. This contributed to Roosevelt's decision to fund the Manhattan Project. He became an American Citizen in 1940 but retained his Swiss citizenship. In 1944 he made a contribution to the war effort by hand writing his 1905 paper on special relativity and putting it up for auction. It raised six million dollars, the manuscript is in the Library of Congress.

  His first wife Mileva died in 1949 and on April 16,1955 Einstein died of heart failure. Einstein was cremated at Trenton, New Jersey at 4 pm on the day of his death. His ashes were scattered at an undisclosed location. He left his scientific papers to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, which he had raised funds for, served as a governor of from 1925 to 1928 but he had turned down a post there in 1933 being critical of its administration. Also after the death of the first president of Israel in 1952, the Israeli government offered the presidency to Einstein. He refused.

During his life he travelled constantly, changed his citizenship several times, was a pacifist, a Zionist and changed man's view of the universe.

"He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, deplorable love-of-country stance, how violently I hate all this, how despicable an ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder." -- Albert Einstein

"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." -- Albert Einstein

Einstein's Brain

Other Scientist's Biographies here.

Nicholaus Copernicus 
Stephen Hawking

Sir Isaac Newton

Nicholaus Copernicus

1473 - 1543

One of the greatest figures in the history of scientific thought Nicolaus Copernicus was born in Torun, Poland on 19 February, 1473 to a middle class family. His father Niclas, a merchant, emigrated from Krakow, and had four children, two boys who adopted a clerical career, the older girl became a Cistercian nun and an Abbess, and the younger married. Nicolaus, was ten years old when his father died. His uncle took charge of the children.  

He studied mathematical sciences and Greek at the university of Krakow and at the universities of Bologna and Padua in Italy and Canon Law at the university of Ferrara. At that time Physicians made use of astrology. Copernicus gave astronomical lectures in Rome, and it was there that he began work on a new astronomy. When he returned to Poland, he practiced medicine, at Heilsberg, treating bishops and princes, and especially the poor, though his official employment was as a canon in the cathedral chapter, working under his maternal uncle, a Bishop. In 1537 King Sigismund of Poland submitted his name as a candidate for the vacant Episcopal seat of Ermland, so it is probable that, in later life, he had entered the priesthood. As he had never married and never fathered any children there has been speculation (unprovable) amongst some that he was gay.

In 1516 he was nominated administrator of the diocesan castle of Allenstein. After four years he returned to the Frauenburg. Three years later he became administrator of the diocese. Public office drew him into the study of finance. In 1522 he wrote a memorandum on monetary reforms, which developed and led to the King of Poland making him deputy counselor on the financial regulations of Prussia to 1529.

 

Copernicus visited Rome, and in about 1513 and wrote a short account of what has since become known as the Copernican theory, namely that the Sun (not the Earth) is at rest in the centre of the Universe. A full account was not published until the very end of his life, under the title On the revolutions of the heavenly spheres (De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, Nuremberg, 1543). Copernicus is said to have received a copy of the printed book for the first time on his deathbed, dying at Frauenburg on 24 May of a cerebral hemorrhage.

On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres

    Copernicus's heliostatic cosmology involved giving several distinct motions to the Earth. It was thus considered implausible by the vast majority of his contemporaries, and by most astronomers and natural philosophers of succeeding generations before the middle of the seventeenth century. Its notable defenders included Johannes Kepler (1571 -1630), Galileo Galilei (1564 - 1642) and was given credence by Newton's theory of universal gravitation (1687). He challenged the geocentric cosmology that had been dogmatically accepted since the time of Aristotle. In direct opposition to Aristotle and to the 2d-century astronomer Ptolemy, Copernicus proposed that a rotating Earth revolved with the other planets about a stationary central Sun.

Anticipated by the Pythagoreans and Aristaechus of Samos whom he had read, and by the Muslim astronomer Ibn al-Shatir and certain Christian writers, the new theory that Copernicus proposed had a mixture of both radical and conservative elements. While reordering of the structure of the universe, Copernicus still held to the ancient doctrines of solid celestial spheres, perfect circular motion of heavenly bodies and Aristotelian physics of motion. He also clung to the Ptolemaic representation of planetary motion by means of complicated combinations of circles called epicycles. Copernicus marked the beginning of the scientific revolution, and of a new view of a greatly enlarged universe although he did not see it as infinite.

   Copernicus used the towers of Allenstein, Heilsberg and Frauenburg  as observatories, and his great work "On the Revolutions of the Celestial Bodies" reveal his unremitting observations of the sun, moon, and planets. His reputation was such that as early as 1514 the Lateran Council, convened by Leo X, asked for his advice on the reform of the ecclesiastical calendar. He believed that the length of the year and of the months and the motions of the sun and moon were not yet sufficiently known to attempt a reform. This spurred him on to make more accurate observations, which, seventy years later, were the basis for the working out of the Gregorian calendar.  

Twenty-five years after his university career, he had finished his great work, but hesitated a long time in publishing, considering imitating  the Pythagoreans, who transmitted the mysteries of their philosophy only orally to their disciples for fear of subjection to the contempt of critics. His friends who had become interested in the new theory convinced him to write an abstract for them, copies of which have been discovered in Vienna and Stockholm. In this commentary Copernicus stated his theory in the form of seven axioms, reserving the mathematical part for later. This was in 1531, and then the heliocentric system began to spread. In 1533 Albert Widmanstadt lectured before Pope Clement VII on the Copernican solar system. Three years later Copernicus was urged by Cardinal Schonberg, to publish his discovery, or at least to have a copy made at the cardinal's expense. But all the urging of friends was in vain, until a younger man George Joachim Rheticus was sent to spend two years at the feet of his new master (1539-41). Soon after his arrival he sent a sixty six page "First Narration" of the new solar system to a scientific friend in Nuremberg. This was printed in Danzig (1540) and Basle (1541). Rheticus next obtained the manuscript of a preliminary chapter of the great work on plane and spherical trigonometry. Copernicus, now sixty-eight years, yielded, to the entreaties of Cardinal Schonberg, and others to give up his manuscripts for publication. Rheticus was to edit the work and the manuscript was to be published at Wittenberg, but owing to the hostility prevailing there against the Copernican system, only the chapter on trigonometry was printed (1542). The two copies of the "First Narration" and of the treatise on trigonometry, are in the Vatican Library. Schöner in Nuremberg, together with Osiander, engaged the printing-house of Petreius. Rheticus tried to resume his chair of mathematics in Wittenberg, but on account of his Copernican views, he had to resign. He and Copernicus were prevented attending to the edition. Copernicus became paralyzed on the right side and became weak in memory and mind many days before his death. The first copy of the "Six Books on the Revolutions of the Celestial Orbits" was handed to him the very day he died. Fortunately he could not see what had been done. Knowing the attitude of Luther and others to the heliocentric system, the word "Hypothesis" was added to the title page, and the preface of Copernicus was replaced by one contrasting  with that of Copernicus, warning the reader not to expect anything certain from astronomy, nor to accept its hypothesis as true. The dedication to Pope Paul III was retained, as was the text.  

Opposition to the new system was first raised by Protestant theologians for Biblical reasons and continued  to our own days. Seventy-three years after publication, the work of Copernicus was forbidden by the Catholic Church "until corrected", and in 1620 these corrections were indicated. Nine sentences, claiming certainty,  were omitted or changed and reading of the book was allowed. In 1758 it disappeared from the revised Index. (i.e. forbidden books) The real preface of Copernicus was returned on the four hundredth anniversary of the author's birthday, with all of Copernicus' corrections were given as foot-notes. A monument was erected to Copernicus in Warsaw in 1830, and another at Torun in 1853. Rheticus, and others called Copernicus the second Ptolemy, and his book the second "Almagest." His genius is that he grasped the truth centuries before it could be proved.
Other Scientist's Biographies here.
Stephen Hawking
Sir Isaac Newton

Stephen Hawking

Another of the beautiful people

 Stephen William Hawking who turned 70 in 2012 was born on 8th. January 1942 (exactly 300 years after the death of Galileo) in Oxford, England. 

His mother Isabel was a member of the Communist Party in England in the 1930's.  His family were from London, but  during WWII Oxford was considered safer. At eight, his family moved to St Albans, 20 miles north of London. At eleven he  went to St Albans School and by 13, Hawking's hero was the atheist philosopher and mathematician, Bertrand Russell. He  went to University College, Oxford, his father's old college. Stephen wanted to do Mathematics, but it was not available at  University College, so he studied Physics. After three years and little work he gained a first class honours degree in  Natural Science. He then went to Cambridge to do research in Cosmology, no-one else was working in that area at Oxford  at the time. His supervisor was Denis Sciama, although he had hoped to get Fred Hoyle who was working in Cambridge.  After gaining his Ph.D. he became first a Research Fellow, and then a Professorial Fellow at Gonville and Caius College.  After leaving the Institute of Astronomy in 1973 Stephen came to the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical  Physics, and from 1979 has held the post of Lucasian Professor of Mathematics. The chair was founded in 1663 with  money from the will of the Rev. Henry Lucas, who was the Member of Parliament for the University. It was first held by  Isaac Barrow, and then in 1663 by Isaac Newton. Professor Hawking has twelve honorary degrees, was awarded the CBE in  1982, and was made a Companion of Honour in 1989. He has received many awards, medals and prizes and is a Fellow of  The Royal Society and a Member of the US National Academy of Sciences. 

'I am quite often asked: How do you feel about having ALS? The answer is, not a lot. I try to lead as normal a life as possible.'  The most important event of his life occurred on December 31, 1962. He met his future wife at a New Year's Eve party. One month later, he was diagnosed with ALS, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and was given only two years to live. Stephen Hawking is a medical miracle. He married Jane Wilde in July of 1965, has three children and a grandchild. Jane Hawking has a doctorate in Medieval Portuguese Literature and is a Christian. 

'I have had motor neurone disease for practically all my adult life. I caught pneumonia in 1985. I had to have a tracheotomy operation. ....David Mason, of Cambridge Adaptive Communication, fitted a small portable computer and a speech synthesizer to my wheel chair. This system allowed me to communicate much better than I could before. I can manage up to 15 words a minute. I can either speak what I have written, or save it to disk. I can then print it out, or call it back and speak it sentence by sentence. Using this system, I have written a book, and dozens of scientific papers. I have also given many scientific and popular talks.'

His 1988 book 'A Brief History of Time' has sold in excess of ten million copies.

         Albert Einstein's theory of relativity appeared to acknowledge the threat of an encounter with God and grudgingly accepted what he called "the necessity for a beginning" and "the presence of a superior reasoning power." But he never accepted a personal God. - Stephen Hawking has worked on the basic laws of the universe and with Roger Penrose he showed that Einstein's General Theory of Relativity implied space/ time had a beginning, The Big Bang, and an end, black holes. This indicated a necessity to unify General Relativity with Quantum Theory. One consequence of this is that he discovered that black holes should not be completely black, but should emit radiation, evaporate and disappear and that the universe has no edge or boundary in imaginary time, thus the way the universe began was determined by the laws of science.

Hawking appears to have a problem with, and says much about God and the Catholic Church.     " He (the Pope) told us that is was all right to study the evolution of the universe after the big bang, but we should not inquire into the big bang itself because that was the moment of Creation and therefore the work of God." The Pope had said in an Address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on 3 October 1981. "Cosmogony itself speaks to us of the origins of the universe and its makeup, not in order to provide us with a scientific treatise but in order to state the correct relationship of man with God and with the universe. Sacred Scripture wishes simply to declare that the world was created by God, and in order to teach this truth, it expresses itself in the terms of the cosmology in use at the time of the writer. The sacred book likewise wishes to tell men that the world was not created as the seat of the gods, as was taught by other cosmogonies and cosmologies, but was rather created for the service of man and the glory of God. Any other teaching about the origin and makeup of the universe is alien to the intentions of the Bible, which does not wish to teach how heaven was made but how one goes to heaven." Leon Lederman, a Nobel Prize winner wrote -   "In the very beginning, there was a void, a curious form of vacuum, a nothingness containing no space, no time, no matter, no light, no sound. Yet the laws of nature were in place and this curious vacuum held potential. A story logically begins at the beginning, but this story is about the universe and unfortunately there are no data for the very beginnings--none, zero. We don't know anything about the universe until it reaches the mature age of a billion of a trillionth of a second. That is, some very short time after creation in the big bang. When you read or hear anything about the birth of the universe, someone is making it up--we are in the realm of philosophy. Only God knows what happened at the very beginning."

Hawking is the most famous physicist in history who has not won the Nobel Prize. This is because the Swedish Royal Academy demands a discovery must be supported by verifiable experiment or observation. His work, to date is highly speculative and remains unproved. Science is just beginning to verify the existence of black holes, let alone verify any of his more radical theoretical proposals. If some of his research turns out to be wrong, he will still have had a profound impact on scientific thought. Einstein was wrong about all sorts of things, but still one of the greatest geniuses.

Stephen Hawking made a guest appearance 19th June 1993 on Star Trek- The Next Generation playing poker in the Holodeck with Data, Einstein, and Newton in the episode "Descent " and he also wrote the foreword to "The Physics of Star Trek" by L. M. Krauss. He has also lent his voice several times to the animation series 'The Simpsons' and 'Futurama'.
Then on the 5th April 2012 he guested on the comedy "The Big Bang Theory" correcting a mistake by fellow theoretical physicist Sheldon.

Recently while watching yet another documentary on this remarkable human I realised that in 1968 a friend and I spent over a year at university discussing Quasars, Pulsars and Black Holes. (not part of my studies I might mention)  All of these where new discoveries in the sixties. It is when I realised that as everything seems to have an opposite, the world is a large instance of negatives and positives that cancel each other out. From nothing we came and to nothing we can go. Current theory is that the vast apparent emptiness of space is full of negative and positive entities coming into being and crashing into each other and ceasing to exist. Is everything a web of strings?

Just think about it.
The first of 10 parts of his programme The Theory of Everything.

The 2004 film "Hawking' with the great Benedict Cumberbatch playing Stephen Hawking. 


Eddie Redmayne in The Theory of Everything

Other Scientist's Biographies here.

Nicholaus Copernicus

Sir Isaac Newton

Albert Einstein

Great People of the Centuries.

The Famous of History

 

This is an attempt to count the centuries and those artists and musicians who gave us the many treasures that enrich our lives. As pointers and to give some context there are also writers, scientists and occasionally other people and events of influence. Perhaps they cross-fertilised and moulded the individual creativity, thoughts and attitudes of each other. Nothing is done in isolation and the attitudes, beliefs and theories of a time are often what manipulate our thoughts or alternately cause us to react against accepted trends. I have decided to stick to the previous thousand years; Once again it is a subjective choice. All people mentioned were born in the century under which they are listed in the order of their birth.

Composers/Musicians     -    Writers/Poets     -    Artists    -    Rulers/Events/People of Influence     -    Scientists/Philosophers

Anno Domini or Year of the Common Era

1000

French poet and composer Pierre Abelard famous for his love for Heloise. Composer and playwright Abbess Hildegard of Bingen. Romanesque revolution in art and monumental architecture, for the purpose of propaganda, Art andscience flourished in China. The writings of Buddism were printed. Guido  of Arezzo invented four line musical notation and intervals.

1100

Saladin and Crusades, King Richard Coeur de Lion composed many plaintive melodies. Genghis Khan, Emperor Hui Zong artist and patron, A monk Nestor created the record of the foundations of the Russian Empire, European literary activity and Carmina Burana collection.  St Francis of Assisi,

1200

Magna Carta signed 1215, Nicola Pisano, Duccio di Buoninsegna, Giotto di Bondone, Philippe de Vitry's treatise 'Ars Nova' described music of the period.  Alighieri Dante,

1300

Francesco Landini blind musician and poet and achieved the highest quality of his time. Hubert and Jan van Eyck, Lorenzo Ghiberti, Robert Campin, Donatello, Fra Angelico,

1400

Johannes Gutenberg, Bellini Family, Thommaso Guidi (Masaccio), Filippo Lippi, Andrea Mantagna, Donato Bramante, Sandro Botticelli, Josquin des Prey  Leonardo da Vinci,   Albrecht Durer, Nicholas Copernicus, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Martin Luther precipitated the Reformation and was also a composer of Hymns. Santi Raphael, Titian, King Henry VIII probably incorrectly is credited with writing 'Greensleves', Antonio Allegri da Correggio, Hans Holbein,

1500

Benvenuto Cellini, Thomas Tallis, John Calvin, Tintoretto, Giovanni Gabrieli, Giovanni da Palestrina, Pieter Bruegel, Veronese, Elizabeth I, El Greco, William Byrd, Giulio Caccini, Jacopo Peri ( the first opera? 'Euridice'), Francis Bacon, John Bull, John Milton Senior composer fathered John Milton the poet. William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlow, Galileo Galilei, Claudio Monteverdi wrote the first true operas. Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Peter Paul Rubens, Gregorio Allegri wrote the famous Miserere which a hundred years later Mozart wrote from memory thus leaving it to the world. Nicolas Poussin, Rene Descartes. Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini, Anthony van Dyck,  Diego Velazquez,

1600

Rembrandt van Rijn, Murillo,  Jean Baptiste Moliere, Robert Boyle, Jean-Baptiste Lully, Jan Vermeer, Christopher Wren, Dietrich Buxtehude,  Sir Isaac Newton, Antonio Stradivari the violin-maker, Johann Pachelbel, Henry Purcell, Alessandro Scarlatti,  Francois Couperin, , Giovanni Bononcini, Tommaso Albinoni, Antonio Vivaldi, George Philipp Telemann,, Jean Philippe Rameau,  Antoine Watteau, George Frederic Handel,, Johann Sebastian Bach,  John Gay, Giuseppe Tartini, Voltaire (Francois-Marie Arouet) , Giovanni Tiepolo, Canaletto.

1700

Farinelli the male soprano,  Thomas Arne, Marquis, de Sade, Giovanni Paisello, Giovanni Battista Pergolesi,  CPE Bach, 4th Earl of Sandwich ( invented style of eating while playing cards),  Joshua Reynolds, George Stubbs, Thomas Gainsborough, Niccolo Piccinni,  Captain James Cook, Josiah Wedgwood,  Joseph Haydn,  JC Bach, , Luigi Boccherini, Francisco de Goya, Domenico Cimarosa, Johanne Wolfgang von Goethe,  Antonio Salieri,, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart,   William Blake, Luigi Cherubini,  Ludwig van Beethoven,   Gasparo Spontini, JMW Turner, John Constable, Daniel Auber,   Niccolo Paganini violinist and composer,  Henry Bishop,  Carl Maria von Weber, Ludwig I of Bavaria, Giacomo Meyerbeer,  Gioacchino Rossini, Gaetano Donizetti, Franz Schubert, Auguste Comte, Eugene Delacroix,  Fromental Halevy.

1800

Vincenzo Bellini, Albert Lortzing, Hector Berlioz, Mikhail Glinka,  Michael William Balfe, Felix Mendelssohn, Charles Robert Darwin, Frederic Chopin, Otto Nicolai, Robert Schumann, Franz List, Ambroise Thomas, Frederich von Flotow,Henri Rousseau, Giuseppe Verdi,  David Livingstone, Richard Wagner,, Charles Gounod,  Jacques Offenbach,  Walt Whitman, Cesar Frank,  Edouard Lalo,  Bedrich Smetana, Anton Bruckner, Johanne Strauss, Anton Rubinstein,  Hans von Bulow, Carl Goldmark, Edouard Manet, Alexander Borodin, Johannes Brahms, James McNeill Whistler, Edgar Degas, Amilcare Ponchielli, ,Camille Saint-Saens, Leo Delibes, Georges Bizet, Paul Cezanne, Modest Mussorgsky, Auguste Rodin, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Claude Monet,  Antonin Dvorak, Pierre Auguste Renoir, Arrigo Boito, Jules Massenet, Arthur Sullivan, Edvard Hagerup Grieg, Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche,  Henri Rousseau, Gabriel Faure, Paul Gauguin, Hubert Parry, CharlesVilliers Stanford, Vincent van Gogh, Engelbert Humperdinck, Oscar Wilde,  Leos Janacek, John Philip Sousa, Sigmund Freud, Edward Elgar, Ruggiero Leoncavallo, Giacomo Puccini, Georges Seurat, Gustave Charpentier, Gustav Mahler, Ignacy Paderewski, Hugo Wolf, Nellie Melba, Claude Debussy, Gustav Klimt, Frederick Delius, Henry Ford, Constantine Cavafy, Edvard Munch, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec,  Pietro Mascagni, Richard Strauss, Jean Sebelius, Alexander Glazunov, Carl Nielsen, Kandinsky, Ferruccio Busoni, Francesco Cilea, Erik Satie, Enrique Granados, Arturo Toscanini, Scott Joplin, Henry Wood (the Proms), Henri Matisse, Franz Lehar, , Alexander Scriabin, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Enrico Caruso, Sergei Rachmaninov, Gustav Holst,  Charles Ives, Arnold Schoenberg,  Joseph Suk,  Thomas Mann, Maurice Ravel, Carl Jung,  Manuel de Falla, Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari,   Albert Einstein, Ottorino Respighi, Bela Bartok, Pablo Picasso, Percy Grainger,  Zoltan Kodaly,  Igor Stravinsky, Amedeo Modigliani, Alban Berg, Jerome Kern, Heitor Villa-Lobos,  Marc Chagall,  Marcel Duchamp, Irving Berlin,   Man Ray, Arthur Bliss,  Serge Prokofiev,  Max Ernst, Cole Porter, , Ivor Novello, Paul Hindemith,  Carl Orff, Bessie Smith,, Erich Korngold, George Gershwin, Rene Magritte, Henry Moore, Duke Ellington, Francis Poulenc

1900

Louis Armstrong, Aaron Copland, Kurt Weill, Richard Rodgers, Joaquin Rodrigo, William Walton, Aram Khachaturian,  Salvador Dali, Count Basie, , Vladimir Horowitz,  Willem de Kooning, Michael Tippett, , Dmitri Shostakovich, Herbert von Karajan, Olivier Messiaen, Benny Goodman,  Francis Bacon, Jean Genet, Gian Carlo Menotti, John Cage,  Jackson Pollock, Woodoe Guthrie, Benjamin Britten, Billie Holiday, Edith Piaf, Frank Sinatra, Leonard Bernstein Ravi Shankar, Roy Lichtenstein,  Mikis Theodorakis,   Joan Sutherland,  Bill Haley, Andy Warhol,   Peter Schulthorpe, Jasper Johns, Malcolm Williamson,   Robert Moog (Synthesiser), David Hockney, John Lennon,Stephen William Hawking

Sir Isaac Newton

'I don't know what I may seem to the world, but, as to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.'

All images can be enlarged

' What Des-Cartes did was a good step.  You have added much several ways, and especially in taking the colours of thin plates into philosophical consideration.  If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.'

    Isaac Newton was born at Woolsthorpe Manor (above), near Grantham in Lincolnshire on Christmas Day 1642,(4 January 1643 in the modern Gregorian calendar). He came from a family of farmers but his father had died in October 1642. His father was wealthy, but uneducated. His mother Hannah remarried Barnabas Smith a minister, when Isaac was two years old. He was virtually an orphan in the care of his grandmother, having an unhappy childhood unloved by his grandfather. In 1653 his stepfather died, and he then lived with his mother, grandmother, half-brother, and two half-sisters. He began school in Grantham. Being five miles from his home, he lodged with another family. Described as 'idle' and 'inattentive', he was taken from school by his wealthy mother to manage her estate, but he showed no talent, or interest in this.

    An uncle persuaded his mother that he should attend university so Isaac returned to school in 1660, lodging with the headmaster of the school, and apparently showed academic promise. Newton entered Trinity College Cambridge, on 5 June 1661. He was older than most of his fellow students but, to receive an allowance toward expenses, he acted as a servant to other students. Humphrey Babington, a distant relative was a Fellow at Trinity, and possibly his patron. Newton's aimed at a law degree. Although dominated by the philosophy of Aristotle he studied Descartes, Hobbes, and Boyle. Copernican astronomy of Galileo attracted him and also Kepler's optics. In a book titled Certain Philosophical Questions, he wrote"Plato is my friend, Aristotle is my friend, but my best friend is truth".

    Newton's interest in mathematics possibly began in 1663 when he bought an astrology book at a fair but could not understand the mathematics. He found that he also knew nothing of geometry, so he read Euclid's Elements and continued to explore. His first original mathematical work seems to have grown out of reading Wallis’s Algebra. Newton was elected a scholar on 28 April 1664 and received his bachelor's degree in April 1665. His scientific genius had not emerged, but it did suddenly when the plague closed the University in the summer of 1665 and he had to return to Lincolnshire. In the next two years he began revolutionary advances in mathematics, optics, physics, and astronomy and he was still under 25.

Newton's first relationship may have been his 20-year roommate John Wickens, while he was a student and professor at Cambridge. Wickens and Newton moved in together to escape the unruly Cambridge student life. John also joined the faculty and later he was laboratory assistant and secretary to Newton.

    When Cambridge reopened he was elected to a minor fellowship at Trinity College but, after being awarded his Master's Degree, he was elected to a major fellowship. In 1669 Barrow sent Newton's text De Analysi to London, but it was not recognised. Barrow resigned and was replaced by Newton to the Lucasian Chair, (held now by Stephen Hawking) where as professor his first work was on optics and this was the topic of his first lecture course in 1670. He concluded that white light is not a simple entity for when a beam of sunlight went through a glass prism he noted the spectrum of colours formed.

    In 1672 Newton was elected a fellow of the Royal Society and published his first scientific paper on light and colour, which was attacked by some. He wanted fame and recognition yet feared criticism and the easiest way to avoid being criticised was to publish nothing. Newton turned in on himself and away from the Royal Society delaying publication of his full optical researches until 1704. Another argument led to a nervous breakdown and when his mother died and he withdrew further into his shell, mixing little with people for many years.

Newton's law of universal gravitation:-

... all matter attracts all other matter with a force proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. 

    Newton's greatest work was in physics and celestial mechanics, which led to his theory of universal gravitation. By 1666 Newton had early versions of his three laws of motion. Newton's novel idea of 1666 was to imagine that the Earth's gravity influenced the Moon, counter- balancing its centrifugal force. From his law of centrifugal force and Kepler's third law of planetary motion, Newton deduced the inverse-square law. Halley persuaded Newton to write a full treattise of his new physics and in 1687 he published the Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica or Principia as it is known, which is recognised as the greatest scientific book ever written. He analysed the motion of bodies and the results were applied to orbiting bodies, projectiles, pendulums, and free-fall near the Earth. He further demonstrated that all heavenly bodies mutually attract one another. Newton explained the eccentric orbits of comets, the tides and their variations, the precession of the Earth's axis, and motion of the Moon as perturbed by the gravity of the Sun. This work made Newton an international leader in scientific research. 

    James II became king of Great Britain on 6 February 1685. He had become a Roman Catholic in 1669, however rebellions arose. Newton was a staunch Protestant and when the King tried to insist that a Benedictine monk be given a degree without taking any examinations or swearing the required oaths, Newton opposed this and when William of Orange landed in November 1688 and James fled to France the University of Cambridge elected Newton, now famous for his strong defence of the university, as one of their two members to the Convention Parliament on 15 January 1689. Newton was seen as a leader of the university and one of the most eminent mathematicians in the world. However, his election to Parliament let him see a life in London, which appealed to him more than the academic world in Cambridge.

    Newton never married and formed one notable close relationship with a young handsome mathematician Fatio de Duillier (left), a Swiss-born mathematician resident in London. Fatio was attracted to science celebrities. Some passionate letters between the two men survive, recording several trips and overnight lodgings these men had together. Fatio was 25 and Newton was 46 at the beginning of their four-year friendship. This was six years after Newton had parted from Wickens. Soon after Fatio moved to Europe Newton suffered a second nervous breakdown in 1693, and retired from research.Newton's relations with Fatio had undergone a crisis. Fatio became ill; then family and financial problems threatened to call him home to Switzerland, which distressed Newton enormously. In 1693 he suggested Fatio move to Cambridge, and Newton would support him, but this did not eventuate. Through early 1693 the intensity of Newton's unsettled spirit grew until without surviving explanation, both the relationship and correspondence ended. Four months later, Samuel Pepys and John Locke, both personal friends of Newton, received bitter letters of accusation. Pepys was was told that Newton would see him no more and Locke was accused of trying to entangle him with women. Many theories evolved as to the cause of the breakdown: poisoning from his alchemy experiments; frustration with his researches; the ending of his one profound relationship with Fatio; and problems with his religious beliefs linked with depression, that he suffered most of his life.

 Newton became Warden of the Royal Mint in 1696 and Master in 1699, but did not resign his positions at Cambridge until 1701. He became a very rich man. In 1703 he was elected president of the Royal Society and was re-elected each year until his death. He was knighted in 1705 by Queen Anne, the first scientist to be so honoured for his work.

The story that Newton's theory of universal gravitation was prompted by a falling apple, is probably based on fact although it may not have fallen on his head. The first account was recorded by William Stukeley following a dinner.

'The weather being warm, we went into the garden and drank tea, under shade of some apple-trees, only he and myself. Amidst other discourses, he told me, he was just in the same situation, as when formerly, the notion of gravitation came into his mind. It was occasioned by the fall of an apple, as he sat in contemplative mood. Why should that apple always descend perpendicularly to the ground, thought he to himself. Why should it not go sideways or upwards, but constantly to the earth's centre.'

 Newton's Grave and Memorial in Westminster Abbey, and Death Mask  below.

Other Scientist's Biographies here.

Nicholaus Copernicus
Stephen Hawking