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Newton is perhaps one of the most well-known names in all of science for his theories on gravity.
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However, his contributions to mathematics may have been more important to his career.
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His book, Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica ("Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy"), was published in 1687, laying the groundwork for classical mechanics.
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Newton also made important contributions to optics, and he is credited alongside Gottfried Leibniz for the development of calculus.
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Principia established the laws of motion and universal gravitation, therefore dominating scientists' understanding of the universe for the next three hundred years.
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He is responsible for removing all remaining doubt in his age about the heliocentric model, which he did by combining Kepler's laws of planetary motion with his own mathematical description of gravity.
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He then used those principles to outline the trajectories of comets, the tides and equinoxes, and other astronomical phenomena.
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Newton correlated that the motion of objects on Earth could be described by the same principles.
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Newton predicted that the Earth was shaped like an oblate spheroid, which was later confirmed by the work of Maupertuis, La Condamine, and more.
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This helped convince most European researchers that Newtonian mechanics was a more in-depth system than that of Descartes.
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While even school children associate Newton with theories on gravity involving a childish story about an apple falling on his head, Newton was actually responsible for a number of elementary discoveries.
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Chief among these are the principle of white light being made up of a spectrum of color, and his work on the first usable reflecting telescope.
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Newton also contributed greatly to the understanding of the speed of sound and empirical laws of cooling.
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In mathematics, Newton is still best known for his work in calculus, and for the binomial theories on exponents, as well as for establishing his method for estimating roots of a function.
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