The Accomplishments of Newton

Newton's accomplishments were of astonishingly broad scope. For example, as a sidelight to his fundamental contributions in physics and astronomy, he (in parallel with Liebnitz) invented the mathematical discipline of calculus, so if you have to take both physics and calculus courses, you have Newton to blame! No survey course such as this one can possibly do justice to what Newton accomplished. The poet Alexander Pope was moved to pen the lines
Nature and Nature's laws
lay hid in night;
God said, Let Newton be!
and all was light
and a study of Newton's discoveries suggests that Pope was indulging only slightly in hyperbole. We shall concentrate on three developments of most direct relevance to our discussion: (1) Newton's Three Laws of Motion, (2) the Theory of Universal Gravitation, and (3) the demonstration that Kepler's Laws follow from the Law of Gravitation.