Isaac Newton, English physicist and mathematician, was born into a poor farming family. Newton was a master of science and mathematics. He single-handedly contributed more to the development of science than any other individual in history. He discovered calculus, but his most popular discovery was gravity. Newton stated explicit principles of scientific methods, which applied universally to all branches of science. Newton was born on Christmas Day in 1642 in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire as a premature infant not expected to live. His father, who he was named after, had died just three months before his birth, and Hannah Ayscough Newton, his mother, remarried when he was three and left him with his grandmother until her second husband died in 1653. Newton's mother removed him from his grammar school where he had shown little promise in his academic work after the death of his stepfather. His uncle became persuaded that he should be prepared to enter a university, and in 1661 Newton went to his uncles old college, Trinity College in Cambridge. In 1664 the Great Plague broke out in London, and the university was closed down the following year.
             Newton's first major public scientific achievement was the invention, design and construction of a reflecting telescope that he had studied while at home during the plague years. He grounded the mirror, built the tube, and still made his own tools for the job. This was real advanced in telescope technology. The mirror gave a sharper representation than was possible with a large lens because a lens focuses different colors at slightly different distances. By an assortment of experiments with the sunlight refracting through a prism he concluded that rays of light, which differ in color, and discovered that the haziness of the image shaped by the object glass of telescopes was due to the different colored rays of light being brought to a focus at diverse distances. He concluded that ...