Isaac Newton

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was in mathematics. He generalized the methods that were being used to draw tangents to curves and to calculate the area swept by curves. He recognized that the two procedures were inverse operations. By joining them in what he called the fluxional method, Newton developed in 1666 a kind of mathematics that is known as calculus. Calculus was a new and powerful method that carried modern mathematics above the level of Greek geometry. Optics was another area of Newton's early interests. In trying to explain how colors occur, he arrived at the idea that sunlight is a heterogeneous blend of different colors of which represents a different color. And that reflections, and refraction's cause colors to appear by separating the blend into its components. Newton demonstrated his theory of colors by passing a beam of sunlight through a type of prism, which split the beam into separate colors. In August 1684 Newton was visited by Edmund Halley, the British astronomer and mathematician, ...

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