page_title: Isaac Newton in popular culture
section_title: Poetry
hierarchical_section_title: Isaac Newton in popular culture / Poetry
context_page_description: Isaac Newton was an English mathematician, natural philosopher, theologian, alchemist and one of the most influential scientists in human history. His Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica is considered to be one of the most influential book in the history of science, laying the groundwork for most of classical mechanics by describing universal gravitation and the three laws of motion. In mathematics, Newton shares the credit with Gottfried Leibniz for the development of the differential and integral calculus.
  Because of the resounding impact of his work, Newton became a scientific icon, much like Albert Einstein after his theory of relativity. Many books, plays, and films focus on Newton or use Newton as a literary device. Newton's stature among scientists remains at the very top rank, as demonstrated by a 2005 survey of scientists in Britain's Royal Society asking who had the greater effect on the history of science, Newton or Albert Einstein. Newton was deemed the more influential. In 1999, leading physicists voted Albert Einstein "greatest physicist ever"; Newton was the runner-up.
context_section_description: English poet Alexander Pope was moved by Newton's accomplishments to write the famous epitaph:
  Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night;
  
  God said "Let Newton be" and all was light.
  English poet J. C. Squire satirised this:
  It could not last; the Devil shouting "Ho! 
  Let Einstein be!" restored the status quo.
  The following passage is from William Wordsworth's The Prelude, in which he describes a marble statue of Newton at Trinity College, Cambridge:
  And from my pillow, looking forth by light
  
  Of moon or favouring stars, I could behold
  
  The antechapel where the statue stood
  
  Of Newton with his prism and silent face,
  
  The marble index of a mind for ever
  
  Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone.
  Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion, William Blake
  A Poem Sacred to the Memory of Sir Isaac Newton, James Thomson
  The Movement of Bodies, Sheenagh Pugh
caption: The statue of Newton, located in the chapel of Trinity College, Cambridge
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