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Synopsis :

In this programme in the BBC documentary series 'The Ascent of Man', Dr Jacob Bronowski, a mathematician, biologist, science historian and author focuses on the physics of Newton and Einstein. English physicist and mathematician Isaac Newton was born in 1642. His father had died some months earlier. He was left in the care of his grandmother after his mother remarried. All his life he gave the impression that he was not loved and he never married. He studied in Trinity College, Cambridge. Newton made several discoveries in physics and mathematics. He invented a new form of mathematics called calculus and contributed to the study of optics. He did experiments with prisms to discover that white is the usual colour of light and the prism decomposes white light into the various colours of the visible spectrum. Newton conceived the idea of universal gravitation to describe the motion of the moon round the earth. He came up with a law of gravity and played a part in improvements in the telescope and the clock. In the programme, Dr Bronowski also looks at the work of the German born physicist and philosopher of science Albert Einstein who later moved to Bern in Switzerland. He wrote a lot of papers on discovering knowledge and the electrodynamics of moving bodies. He is well known for developing the Special Theory of Relativity which includes the famous equation, e = mc2 . Dr Bronowski says that Newton and Einstein are two men who stride like gods. Of the two, Newton was the old testament figure and Einstein, the new testament person who asked immensely simple questions and had an enormous sense of humanity, pity and sympathy.