What is Isaac Newton renowned for?

Isaac Newton, a towering figure of the Scientific Revolution in the 17th century, fundamentally changed how we understand the universe. Before Newton, explanations for why things fell down, or how the planets moved, were largely philosophical. Newton, however, sought mathematical explanations. His groundbreaking work, *Principia Mathematica*, published in 1687, laid out his three laws of motion and, most importantly, his law of universal gravitation. This law explained that every object in the universe attracts every other object with a force proportional to their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. This single law elegantly explained everything from the falling of an apple (the inspiration!) to the orbits of planets around the sun. While cloning sheep, splitting the atom, and discovering penicillin are all significant scientific achievements, they belong to different eras and different scientists. Newton's legacy rests firmly on his work unraveling the concept of gravitation, a cornerstone of modern physics.