Isaac Newton was a famous scientist. He was a mathematician too. He lived long ago in England. He was born in the manor house at Woolsthorpe. His family were farmers. His father died before he was born.

Newton went to Trinity College. It is part of Cambridge University. Then a sickness called the plague closed the school. So he went home to Woolsthorpe. He did important work in math. He did important work in the study of light. He did important work in the study of how things move.

Newton shone sunlight through a glass prism. He saw a band of colors. He split white light into colors with one prism. Then he used a second prism. It joined the colors back into white light. White light is made of all the colors of the rainbow. Newton showed this.

Newton wrote a famous book about how things move. It is called the Principia. In his third law, one thing pushes on another thing. Then the second thing pushes back. It pushes back just as hard. It pushes in the opposite direction.

Newton told a story about watching an apple fall from a tree. He said that everything pulls on everything else. He called this pull gravity. The farther apart two things are, the weaker the pull of gravity between them.

The Sun's gravity pulls on the planets. It holds them in their paths around the Sun. The Earth pulls on the Moon with gravity. That pull keeps the Moon going around the Earth. It helps explain the tides. The tides are the rise and fall of ocean water. They come from the Moon's pull.

Newton's laws helped scientists understand the planets and the Moon. Queen Anne made him a knight in 1705. So he was called Sir Isaac Newton. He lived to be 84 years old. He is buried in Westminster Abbey in London.

Words to know

• prism: light-splitting glass
• plague: a bad sickness
• gravity: pull between things
• tides: water rising, falling