Recognition
The mathematician and physicist Joseph-Louis Lagrange frequently asserted that Newton was the greatest genius who ever lived, and once added that Newton was also "the most fortunate, for we cannot find more than once a system of the world to establish." The English poet Alexander Pope wrote the famous epitaph:
Nature, and Nature's laws lay hid in night.
God said, Let Newton be! and all was light.
But this was not allowed to be inscribed in Newton's monument at Westminster. The epitaph added is as follows:
H. S. E. ISAACUS NEWTON Eques Auratus, / Qui, animi vi prope divinâ, / Planetarum Motus, Figuras, / Cometarum semitas, Oceanique Aestus. Suâ Mathesi facem praeferente / Primus demonstravit: / Radiorum Lucis dissimilitudines, / Colorumque inde nascentium proprietates, / Quas nemo antea vel suspicatus erat, pervestigavit. / Naturae, Antiquitatis, S. Scripturae, / Sedulus, sagax, fidus Interpres / Dei O. M. Majestatem Philosophiâ asseruit, / Evangelij Simplicitatem Moribus expressit. / Sibi gratulentur Mortales, / Tale tantumque exstitisse / HUMANI GENERIS DECUS. / NAT. XXV DEC. A.D. MDCXLII. OBIIT. XX. MAR. MDCCXXVI,
which can be translated as follows:
Here is buried Isaac Newton, Knight, who by a strength of mind almost divine, and mathematical principles peculiarly his own, explored the course and figures of the planets, the paths of comets, the tides of the sea, the dissimilarities in rays of light, and, what no other scholar has previously imagined, the properties of the colours thus produced. Diligent, sagacious and faithful, in his expositions of nature, antiquity and the holy Scriptures, he vindicated by his philosophy the majesty of God mighty and good, and expressed the simplicity of the Gospel in his manners. Mortals rejoice that there has existed such and so great an ornament of the human race! He was born on 25th December 1642, and died on 20th March 1726.
Science writer John G. Simmons ranked Newton first in The Scientific 100, based on a qualitative assessment in which he ordered the scientists according to overall influence, and described him as "the most influential figure in the history of Western science". Physicist Peter Rowlands described him as "the central figure in the history of science", who "more than anyone else is the source of our great confidence in the power of science." New Scientist called Newton "the supreme genius and most enigmatic character in the history of science". The philosopher and historian David Hume also declared that Newton was "the greatest and rarest genius that ever arose for the ornament and instruction of the species". In his home of Monticello, Thomas Jefferson, a Founding Father and President of the United States, kept portraits of John Locke, Sir Francis Bacon, and Newton, whom he described as "the three greatest men that have ever lived, without any exception", and who he credited with laying "the foundation of those superstructures which have been raised in the Physical and Moral sciences". The writer and philosopher Voltaire wrote of Newton that "If all the geniuses of the universe were assembled, Newton should lead the band". The neurologist and psychoanalyst Ernest Jones wrote of Newton as "the greatest genius of all times". The mathematician Guillaume de l'Hôpital had a mythical reverence for Newton, which he expressed with a profound question and statement: "Does Mr. Newton eat, or drink, or sleep like other men? I represent him to myself as a celestial genius, entirely disengaged from matter."
Newton has further been called "the towering figure of the Scientific Revolution" and that "In a period rich with outstanding thinkers, Newton was simply the most outstanding." The polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe labelled the year in which Galileo Galilei died and Newton was born, 1642, as the "Christmas of the modern age". In the polymath Vilfredo Pareto's estimation, Newton was the greatest human being who ever lived. On the bicentennial of Newton's death in 1927, the astronomer James Jeans stated that he "was certainly the greatest man of science, and perhaps the greatest intellect, the human race has seen". The physicist Peter Rowlands also notes that Newton was "possibly possessed of the most powerful intellect in the whole of human history". Newton conceived four revolutions—in optics, mathematics, mechanics, and gravity—but also foresaw a fifth in electricity, though he lacked the time and energy in old age to fully accomplish it. Newton's work is considered the most influential in bringing forth modern science.
The historian of science James Gleick noted that Newton "discovered more of the essential core of human knowledge than anyone before or after", and wrote further:He was chief architect of the modern world. He answered the ancient philosophical riddles of light and motion, and he effectively discovered gravity. He showed how to predict the courses of heavenly bodies and so established our place in the cosmos. He made knowledge a thing of substance: quantitative and exact. He established principles, and they are called his laws.
The physicist Ludwig Boltzmann called Newton's Principia "the first and greatest work ever written about theoretical physics". Physicist Stephen Hawking similarly called Principia "probably the most important single work ever published in the physical sciences". The mathematician and physicist Joseph-Louis Lagrange called Principia "the greatest production of the human mind", and noted that "he felt dazed at such an illustration of what man's intellect might be capable".
Physicist Edward Andrade stated that Newton "was capable of greater sustained mental effort than any man, before or since". He also noted the place of Newton in history, stating:From time to time in the history of mankind a man arises who is of universal significance, whose work changes the current of human thought or of human experience, so that all that comes after him bears evidence of his spirit. Such a man was Shakespeare, such a man was Beethoven, such a man was Newton, and, of the three, his kingdom is the most widespread. The French physicist and mathematician Jean-Baptiste Biot praised Newton's genius, stating that:
Never was the supremacy of intellect so justly established and so fully confessed . . . In mathematical and in experimental science without an equal and without an example; combining the genius for both in its highest degree.Despite his rivalry with Gottfried Wilhem Leibniz, Leibniz still praised the work of Newton, with him responding to a question at a dinner in 1701 from Sophia Charlotte, the Queen of Prussia, about his view of Newton with:Taking mathematics from the beginning of the world to the time of when Newton lived, what he had done was much the better half.
The mathematician E.T. Bell ranked Newton alongside Carl Friedrich Gauss and Archimedes as the three greatest mathematicians of all time, with the mathematician Donald M. Davis also noting that Newton is generally ranked with the other two as the greatest mathematicians ever. In his 1962 paper from the journal The Mathematics Teacher, the mathematician Walter Crosby Eells attempted a quantitative ranking of mathematicians based on the amount of space devoted to them in reference works; Newton was ranked first out of a list of the top 100, a position that remained first even after probable error was taken into account in the study. In his book Wonders of Numbers in 2001, the science editor and author Clifford A. Pickover ranked his top ten most influential mathematicians that ever lived, placing Newton first in the list. In The Cambridge Companion to Isaac Newton (2016), he is described as being "from a very young age, an extraordinary problem-solver, as good, it would appear, as humanity has ever produced". He is ultimately ranked among the top two or three greatest theoretical scientists ever, alongside James Clerk Maxwell and Albert Einstein, the greatest mathematician ever alongside Carl F. Gauss, and in the first rank of experimentalists, thereby putting "Newton in a class by himself among empirical scientists, for one has trouble in thinking of any other candidate who was in the first rank of even two of these categories." Also noted is "At least in comparison to subsequent scientists, Newton was also exceptional in his ability to put his scientific effort in much wider perspective". Gauss himself had Archimedes and Newton as his heroes, and used terms such as clarissimus or magnus to describe other intellectuals such as great mathematicians and philosophers, but reserved summus for Newton only, and once realising the immense influence of Newton's work on scientists such as Lagrange and Pierre-Simon Laplace, Gauss then exclaimed that "Newton remains forever the master of all masters!"
In his book Great Physicists, the chemist William H. Cropper highlighted the unparalleled genius of Newton, stating:
On one assessment there should be no doubt: Newton was the greatest creative genius physics has ever seen. None of the other candidates for the superlative (Einstein, Maxwell, Boltzmann, Gibbs, and Feynman) has matched Newton's combined achievements as theoretician, experimentalist, and mathematician.Albert Einstein kept a picture of Newton on his study wall alongside ones of Michael Faraday and of James Clerk Maxwell. Einstein stated that Newton's creation of calculus in relation to his laws of motion was "perhaps the greatest advance in thought that a single individual was ever privileged to make." He also noted the influence of Newton, stating that:The whole evolution of our ideas about the processes of nature, with which we have been concerned so far, might be regarded as an organic development of Newton's ideas.In 1999, an opinion poll of 100 of the day's leading physicists voted Einstein the "greatest physicist ever," with Newton the runner-up, while a parallel survey of rank-and-file physicists ranked Newton as the greatest. In 2005, a dual survey of the public and members of Britain's Royal Society asked two questions: who made the bigger overall contributions to science and who made the bigger positive contributions to humankind, with the candidates being Newton or Einstein. In both groups, and for both questions, the consensus was that Newton had made the greater overall contributions.
In 1999 Time magazine named Newton the Person of the Century for the 17th century. Newton placed sixth in the 100 Greatest Britons poll conducted by BBC in 2002. However, in 2003, he was voted as the greatest Briton in a poll conducted by BBC World, with Winston Churchill second. He was voted as the greatest Cantabrigian by University of Cambridge students in 2009.
The physicist Lev Landau ranked physicists on a logarithmic scale of productivity and genius ranging from 0 to 5. The highest ranking, 0, was assigned to Newton. Einstein was ranked 0.5. A rank of 1 was awarded to the fathers of quantum mechanics, such as Werner Heisenberg and Paul Dirac. Landau, a Nobel prize winner and the discoverer of superfluidity, ranked himself as 2.
The SI derived unit of force is named the newton in his honour.
Most of Newton's surviving scientific and technical papers are kept at Cambridge University. Cambridge University Library has the largest collection and there are also papers in Kings College, Trinity College, and the Fitzwilliam Museum. There is an archive of theological and alchemical papers in the National Library of Israel, and smaller collections at the Smithsonian Institution, Stanford University Library, and the Huntington Library. The Royal Society in London also has some manuscripts. The Israel collection was inscribed by UNESCO on its Memory of the World International Register in 2015, recognising the global significance of the documents. The Cambridge and Royal Society collections were added to this inscription in 2017.
