Politically and personally tied to the Whig party, Newton served two brief terms as Member of Parliament for the University of Cambridge, in 1689–16–1702. Beyond his work on the mathematical sciences, Newton dedicated much of his time to the study of alchemy and biblical chronology, but most of his work in those areas remained unpublished until long after his death. He refused to take holy orders in the Church of England, unlike most members of the Cambridge faculty of the day. He was a devout but unorthodox Christian who privately rejected the doctrine of the Trinity. Newton was a fellow of Trinity College and the second Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge. In addition to his work on calculus, as a mathematician Newton contributed to the study of power series, generalised the binomial theorem to non-integer exponents, developed a method for approximating the roots of a function, and classified most of the cubic plane curves. He also formulated an empirical law of cooling, made the first theoretical calculation of the speed of sound, and introduced the notion of a Newtonian fluid. His work on light was collected in his highly influential book Opticks, published in 1704. Newton built the first practical reflecting telescope and developed a sophisticated theory of colour based on the observation that a prism separates white light into the colours of the visible spectrum. Newton's inference that the Earth is an oblate spheroid was later confirmed by the geodetic measurements of Maupertuis, La Condamine, and others, convincing most European scientists of the superiority of Newtonian mechanics over earlier systems. He demonstrated that the motion of objects on Earth and celestial bodies could be accounted for by the same principles. Newton used his mathematical description of gravity to derive Kepler's laws of planetary motion, account for tides, the trajectories of comets, the precession of the equinoxes and other phenomena, eradicating doubt about the Solar System's heliocentricity. In the Principia, Newton formulated the laws of motion and universal gravitation that formed the dominant scientific viewpoint for centuries until it was superseded by the theory of relativity. Newton also made seminal contributions to optics, and shares credit with German mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz for developing infinitesimal calculus. His pioneering book Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica ( Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy), first published in 1687, consolidated many previous results and established classical mechanics. He was a key figure in the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment that followed. Sir Isaac Newton FRS (25 December 1642 – 20 March 1726/27) was an English mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author who was described in his time as a natural philosopher.
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