Isaac Newton (1643-1727) "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." The greatest scientist and mathematician of his day, the father of the modern physical sciences and the inventor of calculus, was not a very sociable man. At college, he rarely spoke to other students and didn't join them for sports. He was reclusive, suspicious. He so disliked interaction and conflict that he preferred not to publish his groundbreaking discoveries in order to avoid having to defend them against critics. Indeed, his greatest work, the Principia, might never have been written at all if it hadn't been for the urgings of colleagues who kept coming to him to resolve disputes. In it, he set down his famous laws of motion and identified gravity as the fundamental force controlling the universe, affecting orbiting planets and falling apples equally. The Principia still stands as one of the greatest human achievement in abstract thought. He spent years dedicating himself to less fruitful pursuits as well-the study of alchemy, the analysis of Judeo-Christian prophecy, and an attempt to reconcile the chronologies of the ancient Greeks with the Bible. In 1705, he was the first scientist ever knighted. But though he became more sociable in his later years and served for many years as President of the Royal Academy of Sciences, he lived modestly, never married, and had no children. Books, experiments, and ideas continued to be his preferred company. Isaac Newton (1643-1727)