Sir Isaac Newton (1643-1727)

English mathematician and physicist. His 1687 Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (Principia Mathematica) presented universal laws of motion and universal gravitation, showing that the same physical laws governed apples falling on Earth and planets moving in orbit. Newton's synthesis was so successful that it became the model for what knowledge could be: certain, mathematical, universal. Voltaire would later popularize Newton's ideas in France.