The greatest scientific mind of the age, spanning mathematics, physics, astronomy, optics, chemistry and botany, belonged to Isaac Newton. Born in 1642, Member of Parliament for Cambridge, knighted in 1705, he was fifty-five when Peter arrived in England. His greatest work, the majestic Principia Mathematica, formulating the law of universal gravitation, was already behind him, published in 1687. Newton’s work, in the appraisal of Albert Einstein, “determined the course of Western thought, research and practice to an extent that nobody before or since his time can touch.”
