The famous natural scientist Isaac Newton was born the son of a farmer in the English town of Woolsthorpe. The little boy showed great talents in natural sciences and enrolled at Trinity College in Cambridge after he had finished grammar school. He put the focus of his studies on mathematics. As early as in 1669 Isaac Newton taught in Cambridge, the same year he developed a reflector telescope. Among his greatest achievement in mathematics was an independent development of infinitesimal calculus, the so-called "Method of Fluxions", which has its fundament in the writing "Methodus fluxionum et seriarum infinitarum" from 1671.
The scientist was appointed member of the "Royal Society" in 1672 because of his groundbreaking findings on the structure of white light beams. In 1687 Isaac Newton published his books "Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica" which contains the three renowned laws of motion and Newton's law of gravitation. In 1700 Newton left Cambridge and lived in London, where he was president of the "Royal Society" from 1703 up until his death on 31 March, 1727. Today the pompous tomb of Sir Isaac Newton, who was knighted in 1705, in Westminster Abbey still is a symbol of his importance for modern natural science.