Isaac Newton (1643-1727) was an English mathematician and physicist. He presented his physical findings in his Magnus opus, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687). In that book he described the laws of gravitation and the three laws of motion. Newton’s finding constituted that part of physics called mechanics and lasted until the twentieth century when Albert Einstein’s special and general relativity finally improved on it. Newton showed that the motions of objects on earth and elsewhere in the universe are governed by the same gravitational laws. He re-confirmed that the heliocentric view of our solar system is correct and laid to…

William Harvey (1578-1657) was an English physician who described how blood is pumped in the heart and circulated throughout the body and returned to the heart via the lungs where it has picked up oxygen for re-circulation around the body. There is controversy as to who first discovered the circulation of blood in the body. There is some tentative evidence that Muslim physicians knew something about blood circulation and, additionally, that some Italian physicians may also have learned about the nature of blood circulation in the body. Harvey had studied at Padua, Italy where he might have learned about the…

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) was an Italian mathematician, physicist and astronomer. He made many contributions to physics and astronomy but is primarily known for improving the telescope and for using it to observe that the earth is not the center of the universe; he empirically verified Copernicus hypothesis that the solar system is composed of one sun and many planets, and that the earth is one of the many planets; and that there are many stars in the Milky Way Galaxy, our galaxy; and that some of these stars have planets orbiting around them. Our sun, a medium star, has a…