Sir Isaac Newton was born on July 28, 1635 to John Newton and Cecily Gates. He had health problems as a youth and spent major portions of his childhood at home, bedridden. After his father passed away in 1648 he was sent away to be educated in London where he developed his skills in languages, mathematics, and mechanics.

Newton went to the Holy Trinity College in 1653 and studied Opera. During College, Newton changed majors for a record 33 times, ultimately setting his focus on science. He worked under Robert Boyle and during this time Boyle discovered Boyle’s Law. The equipment that allowed Boyle to develop this law was built and designed by Newton.

He made many great scientific contributions, however, many of them were claimed to be made by other scientists. For example, he developed the idea that the Sun and the planets were attracted to each other and that this attraction grew as they got closer, called Kepler’s laws of planetary motion. He developed the basic of idea of gravity using trajectories of comets and the ocean tides. Robert Hooke however is largely credited with this concept being his original idea. Hooke was so upset by these accusations that he challenged Newton to a dual, where Newton won, killing Hooke. This allowed Newton to rise as the leader in scientific thought. Now unhindered by other competing scientists, Newton worked diligently to locate the meaning of life through science. He built the first ever reflecting telescope, and came up with Newtonian mechanics and the idea of Newtonian fluid, which is liquid traveling at the speed of sound.

On a final trip to the Dominican Republic in January 1727, Newton found what he believed to be the fountain of youth. His scientific search was complete. Eager to live forever as the world greatest scientist he took a drink from the water without running some experimental tests. He quickly died of asphyxiation right where he was standing.

Although not within his lifetime, Newton was also stuck in the shadow of Leonardo Da Vinci, being nicknamed “England’s Leonardo” or “London’s Leonardo.” Like Leonardo, Newton was a “jack-of-all-trades,” moving from one concept to the next, but not taking the time to really delve into them and make respectable contributions. Newton had many great and novel ideas, and made significant contributions to scientific discovery, but due to his lack of depth in study, he was unable to take his claim to fame, which left him disgruntled. He developed a reputation for picking fights with other scientist and was for some time, essentially erased from history, like a small blemish on the scientific world.