![]() Upon learning that Newton had mathematically worked out the elliptical paths of celestial bodies, such as the movement of the planets around the sun, Halley urged him to organize his notes. In 1684, English astronomer Edmund Halley paid a visit to the reclusive Newton. In the following years, he returned to his earlier studies on the forces governing gravity. ![]() Known for his temperamental defense of his work, Newton engaged in heated correspondence with Hooke before suffering a nervous breakdown and withdrawing from the public eye in 1678. His methods were heavily criticized by established Society member Robert Hooke, who was also unwilling to compromise again with Newton’s follow-up paper in 1675. Through his experiments, Newton determined that white light was a composite of all the colors on the spectrum, and he asserted that light was composed of particles instead of waves. The following year, fascinated with the study of light, he published his notes on optics for his peers. In 1671 he was asked to give a demonstration of his telescope to the Royal Society of London in 1671, the same year he was elected to the prestigious Society. He constructed the first reflecting telescope in 1668, and the following year he received his Master of Arts degree and took over as Cambridge’s Professor of Mathematics. When the Great Plague shut Cambridge off from the rest of England in 1665, Newton returned home and began formulating his theories on calculus, light and color, his farm the setting for the supposed falling apple that inspired his work on gravity. Following an education interrupted by a failed attempt to turn him into a farmer, he attended the King’s School in Grantham before enrolling at the University of Cambridge’s Trinity College in 1661, where he soon became fascinated by the works of modern philosophers such as René Descartes. The son of a farmer, who died three months before he was born, Newton spent most of his early years with his maternal grandmother after his mother remarried. Isaac Newton was born on January 4, 1643, in Lincolnshire, England. You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13 which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.
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