English natural philosopher known for his seminal contributions to several fields of science including physicist, mathematics and chemistry. He is most famous for his laws of motion which laid the foundation for classical mechanics. With his law on universal gravitation, Newton proved Kepler’s laws of planetary motion and then the trajectories of comets, the precession of the equinoxes and the tides. He confirmed the heliocentric model of the solar system, removing any remaining doubts and also predicted the shape of the earth to be an oblate spheroid. Newton is also credited to have invented calculus independently of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. He contributed to the study of power series, generalised the binomial theorem to non-integer exponents and developed a method for approximating the roots of a function. His other important discoveries were in the field of optics were he observed the spitting of white light into the various colours of the spectrum and built the first practical reflecting telescope.
