Newton's position in Western society was so exalted that some believe that he could be ranked second among the most influential people in world history, after Muhammad and even before Jesus and Confucius. In China, Newton is usually seen only as a brilliant scientist, while in the West he is seen as the thinker who started modern society. The poet Alexander Pope wrote these verses while visiting Newton's tomb:
Nature and the laws of nature are hidden in the dark.
God said, "Let Newton go."
And all things became light.
This is regarded by Westerners as the most concise and accurate assessment of Newton's life, in Newton's time, scientists (called natural philosophers at the time) were mostly clergy, aristocrats, or children of wealthy merchants, because reading was expensive, and doing research was even more so. Newton's contemporary, Boyle, was born into an aristocratic family, while Halley was born into a wealthy merchant family. Newton came from a family of yeoman farmers, and if he had been born 100 years earlier, he would probably have been farming for the rest of his life.
Fortunately, after the development of Elizabeth I in England at that time, education had begun to be universal, so Newton was sent to public school as a child. Although his mother wanted him to return home to farm, Henry Stoker, the principal of Newton's secondary school at the time, took a fancy to Newton's talent and persuaded his mother to let him go back to school, thus changing Newton's life.
In 1661, Newton entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied with the mathematician and natural philosopher Isaac Barrow. Professor Barrow was the first "Professor Lucas", but he felt that Newton was too good to give up the position to Newton. The Lucas Chair in Mathematics is the most prestigious faculty position in the world's academic community, and has historically served as professors in this position by famous scientists such as Babbage, Dirac and Stephen Hawking.
At Cambridge University, Newton was awarded a scholarship (equivalent to a scholarship today) because of his outstanding grades, which ensured that he could devote himself to scientific research without worrying about his livelihood. Thus, in just a few years, Newton made great achievements in scientific research. In 1664, Newton proposed the theory of solar spectroscopy, that is, sunlight is composed of seven colors of light, and Newton was only 22 years old this year.
In the summer of 1665, when the plague epidemic in Cambridge occurred, Newton returned to his hometown Wuldsthorpe and spent nearly two years there, which was also the most active period of his thoughts, and made many important discoveries and research results in the history of modern science and technology, including: discovering the law of centrifugal force, completing the prototype of Newton's three laws of mechanics, clarifying the definition of force, defining the momentum of object collision, etc.; Mathematically, Newton invented the binomial theorem and gave a table of coefficient relations; When studying the problem of the speed of motion, the concept of "flow number" was proposed, which was the prototype of calculus.
Therefore, later generations called 1666 the first miracle year in the history of science.