Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica

Albert Einstein wrote of Sir Isaac Newton: 'Nature was to him an open book, whose letters he could read without effort... He stands before us strong, certain, and alone: his joy in creation and his minute precision are evident in every word and every figure.'

Isaac Newton was born prematurely on 25 December 1642, and three years later was left in the care of his maternal grandmother when his mother re-married. He was educated at the King's School, Grantham and in 1661 entered Trinity College at Cambridge.

Despite rather undistinguished undergraduate studies and the failure of a scholarship examination because of inadequate geometry, he went on to become one of the giants of science. Newton was absent from Cambridge for most of the plague years of 1665-66, but he considered those years as 'the prime of my age for invention.' On returning to the University he was elected a minor Fellow in 1667 and a major Fellow the following year. He became Lucasian Professor of Mathematics in 1669.

His years at Cambridge were when he was at the height of his creative powers. During public lectures given between 1669-71 he gave account of his discoveries in optics which were finally only published in 1704, although the book had largely been written in 1692. In 1672 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, of which he would later in 1703 be elected President until his death.

During the mid 1680s Newton returned to his examination of dynamics, culminating in the publication of his Principia (Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica) in 1687.

Newton's well known Laws of motion are:

• First: Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it.
• Second: The relationship between an object's mass m, its acceleration a, and the applied force F is F = ma.
• Third: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction

From 1696 Newton was the Master of the Mint and played a major role in the revision of the coinage. Newton was knighted in 1705 and on his death in 1726 was given a national funeral and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

The State Library holds in its collections a book which Newton took with him to Trinity College, Cambridge in 1661: this is Locorvm communivm S. theologiae institvtio per epitomen by Lucas Trelcatio. It bears Newton's signature and the date 1661 on the top corner of the fly leaf. It was presented to the Library by Dr Orde Poynton through the Friends of the State Library of South Australia in 1950.

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