Plate from Opticks, by Isaac Newton, showing the splitting of light through prisms, 1704. Artist: Unknown

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Plate from Opticks, by Isaac Newton, showing the splitting of light through prisms, 1704. English physicist and mathematician Newton (1642-1727) first separated white light into the colours of the spectrum by using a prism in 1666. His theories regarding optics and the nature of light, set out in Opticks, led to him building the first reflecting telescope. Newton's discoveries were prolific and exerted a huge influence on science and thought. His theories of gravity and his three laws of motion were outlined in his greatest work, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, (1687) and he is credited with discovering differential calculus. Knighted by Queen Anne in 1705, Newton is buried in Westminster Abbey, London.

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