Isaac Newton.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton

Sir Isaac Newton was an English physicist and mathematician (described in his own day as a "natural philosopher") who is widely recognised as one of the most influential scientists of all time and as a key figure in the scientific revolution. His book Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica ("Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy"), first published in 1687, laid the foundations for classical mechanics. Newton also made seminal contributions to optics and shares credit with Gottfried Leibniz for the invention of calculus.(25 December 1642 – 20 March 1727)

Newton's Principia formulated the laws of motion and universal gravitation, which dominated scientists' view of the physical universe for the next three centuries. By deriving Kepler's laws of planetary motion from his mathematical description of gravity, and then using the same principles to account for the trajectories of comets, the tides, theprecession of the equinoxes, and other phenomena, Newton removed the last doubts about the validity of theheliocentric model of the cosmos. This work also demonstrated that the motion of objects on Earth and of celestialbodies could be described by the same principles. His prediction that the Earth should be shaped as an oblate spheroidwas later vindicated by the measurements of Maupertuis, La Condamine, and others, which helped convince mostContinental European scientists of the superiority of Newtonian mechanics over the earlier system of Descartes.

Newton was a fellow of Trinity College and the second Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge. He was a devout but unorthodox Christian and, unusually for a member of the Cambridge faculty of the day, he refused to take holy orders in the Church of England, perhaps because he privately rejected the doctrine of theTrinity. Beyond his work on the mathematical sciences, Newton dedicated much of his time to the study of biblical chronology and alchemy, but most of his work in those areas remained unpublished until long after his death. In his later life, Newton became president of the Royal Society. He also served the British government as Warden and Master of the Royal Mint.

                                                                      Sir Issac Newton.