Sir Isaac Newton

The latest in the Livescience series on world influencing events examines the life and works of 17th century mathemetician and scientist Sir Isaac Newton.

"Newton's wide range of discoveries, from his theories of optics to his groundbreaking work on the laws of motion and gravity, formed the basis for modern physics. The true genius of his work, experts think, is how he ultimately took those theories and applied them to the universe at large, explaining the motions of the Sun and planets in a way that had never been done before."

In addition to his Laws of Motion, Newton also discovered the concept of the light spectrum using a crystal prism to separate white light into its colored components. and also developed the concept of infinite series calculus, still used by engineers and statisticians today. Late in his life, Newton also developed the theory of gravity in his masterwork, Principia.