On this day, in 1642, Sir Isaac Newton was born. Newton was an English physicist and mathematician who made outstanding contributions in optics, mathematics and mechanics. He synthesised the scattered ideas of the time, put forth by Copernicus, Galileo Galilei and Johannes Kepler, into a “system of the world”. His three laws of motion resulted in the formulation of the law of universal gravitation, which rules the way objects fall on Earth, but also the movement of the celestial bodies. Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, published in 1687, is one of the most important works in the history of modern science.