Yes,Sir Isaac Newton is best known for his work on gravity.

He also worked on and discovered many other scientific wonders during his lifetime (1642-1727). His work in physics was so advanced that he was the first scientist to be knighted, which is a great honor in England and the reason "Sir" preceeds his name.

So what else did Sir Isaac Newton discover? Besides his work on universal gravitation (gravity), Newton developed the three laws of motion which form the basic principles of modern physics. His discovery of calculus led the way to more powerful methods of solving mathematical problems. His work in optics included the study of white light and the discovery of the color spectrum. It was his experiments with light that first made him famous. How did he discover the color spectrum? Newton performed an experiment using a glass prism. For the experiment he placed a glass prism in front of a beam of light projected through a tiny hole in a window shade. You can perform a virtual version of the experiment below (works with Netscape 3.0 and higher, or Internet Explorer 4.0 and higher). You just need to place the mouse cursor over the prism to darken the room and reveal the color spectrum.

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) was a pivotal figure in the development of modern astronomy, both because of his contributions directly to astronomy, and because of his work in physics and its relation to astronomy. He provided the crucial observations that proved the Copernican hypothesis, and also laid the foundations for a correct understanding of how objects moved on the surface of the earth (dynamics) and of gravity.

The Telescope

Galileo did not invent the telescope (Dutch spectacle makers receive that credit), but he was the first to use the telescope to study the heavens systematically. His little telescope was poorer than even a cheap modern amateur telescope, but what he observed in the heavens rocked the very foundations of Aristotle's universe and the theological-philosophical worldview that it supported. It is said that what Galileo saw was so disturbing for some officials of the Church that they refused to even look through his telescope; they reasoned that the Devil was capable of making anything appear in the telescope, so it was best not to look through it.

The Moons of Jupiter

Galileo observed 4 points of light that changed their positions with time around the planet Jupiter. He concluded that these were objects in orbit around Jupiter. Indeed, they were the 4 brightest moons of Jupiter, which are now commonly called the Galilean moons (Galileo himself called them the Medicea Siderea---the ``Medician Stars''). Here is an animation based on actual observations of the motion of these moons around Jupiter. These observations again showed that there were new things in the heavens that Aristotle and Ptolemy had known nothing about. Furthermore, they demonstrated that a planet could have moons circling it that would not be left behind as the planet moved around its orbit. One of the arguments against the Copernican system (and the original heliocentric idea of Aristarchus) had been that if the moon were in orbit around the Earth and the Earth in orbit around the Sun, the Earth would leave the Moon behind as it moved around its orbit.