note A particularly unpleasant scammer who had gotten rich off of setting up phony Catholic conspiracies and then turning in the poor idiots who went along with him. Newton successfully prosecuted 28 counterfeiters while in office, most prominently William Chaloner. (On being praised for his scientific insight: "If I have seen further than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants." note although this may actually have been a short-guy joke aimed at his rival Robert Hooke, with whom he had the type of relationship that Thomas Edison would later have with Nikola Tesla) He also became possibly the most badass inflation-fighter in history, personally going undercover to taverns and so on to catch counterfeiters and clippers and collect evidence to prosecute them at trial-which he would then go on to do, as he was a justice of the peace (at the time more of an investigatory and prosecutorial position rather than a judicial one) in every county. Newton is also commemorated in the edge description of the two pound coin (whose tail side bears a representation of scientific and technological progress note that wouldn't actually work) with his relevant quote STANDING ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS. This is remembered in the edge inscription of the modern British pound, DECUS ET TUTAMEN ("an ornament and a safeguard"). ![]() This was important because of a practice at the time where criminals would clip the edges off coins, keep the bits of precious metal to melt down, and pass off the clipped coin as its full value, weakening the currency (and thus causing inflation). Instead, he took his coinage jobs seriously, and during his tenure at the Mint he introduced the practice of milling coins-putting a decorative border on them so it would be obvious if pieces had been clipped off. Ironically, in his lifetime he was better known for being Warden and then Master of the Royal Mint-jobs which, doubly ironically, were meant to be sinecures to give him extra income to support his scientific career. ![]() This idea has become so entrenched in popular thought that, when further work by Albert Einstein on the extreme scales of the universe proved that his conclusions aren't applicable everywhere, the larger body of scientific research since then-including that by Einstein-has revolved around the idea of reconciling the two and restoring (our understanding of) the physical universe to a single, overarching theory. He was one of the trope codifiers for the concept of Equivalent Exchange ("for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction") and the idea of a rational, regular universe-the idea that there are certain laws of nature that are always true, everywhere. To derive the equations for motion in his Principia Mathematica, he had to invent integral calculus out of whole cloth. His work on gravity would lend further credence to heliocentrism (the belief that the Sun, and not the Earth, is the centre of the Solar System). Christmas day, not very long after Galileo Galilei died), the physicist was a Renaissance Man and dabbled in astronomy, mathematics, alchemy and theology. far from very massive objects like black holes and stars. "Classical" is because it was proven to be wrong by Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity, but it remains useful as an infinitesimally close approximation under ordinary conditions - i.e. note Before Newton, people were fairly sure Aristotle was wrong about the idea that earthly and heavenly bodies are subject to different laws of motion, but until Newton nobody really understood the mathematics of what the rules were - hence "universal", since it applies to all objects everywhere. To elaborate, Isaac Newton is the originator of the Three Laws of Motion and the classical theory of universal gravitation ( in popular imagery, after seeing an apple fall from a tree/after an apple fell on his head). Contemporary portraits suggest he looked like Robert Plant from Led Zeppelin and Brian May after he turned grey note May, by the way, has a Ph.D in physics. ![]() ![]() Sir Isaac Newton (25 December 1642 - 20 March 1726 Julian calendar, 4 January 1643 - 31 March 1727 Gregorian calendar) was a revolutionary British scientist best remembered for his Accidental Discovery of gravity, which we all know can be a harsh mistress.
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