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American History

40 of the Most Influential People of All Time

Marie Curie - Pierre Curie
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3. Isaac Newton

Portrait of Isaac Newton (1642-1727).This a copy of a painting by Sir Godfrey Kneller (1689). Wikimedia Commons/ Public Domain.

Isaac Newton is probably most famous for his discovery of gravity, which explains both why things fall to earth and why planets stay in orbit around the sun. When he needed to make measurements that involved a form of math that didn’t exist, he invented a new branch of math: calculus. He wrote down many of his discoveries in a book called Principia, which is still considered a masterpiece. His findings were used by Einstein over two centuries later.

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