American Minute with Bill Federer Sir Isaac Newton died MARCH 20, 1727. With his mother widowed twice, he had been raised by his grandmother before being sent off to grammar school and later Cambridge. He discovered calculus, the laws of gravity and built the first reflecting telescope. Using a prism, he demonstrated that a beam of light contained all the colors of the rainbow.

President of the Royal Society from 1703 till his death, Sir Isaac Newton wrote in Principia, 1687: "This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent Being... All variety of created objects which represent order and life in the universe could happen only by the willful reasoning of its original Creator, whom I call the Lord God."

In Optics, 1704, Newton wrote: "God in the beginning formed matter." Regarding the Bible, Newton wrote: "The system of revealed truth which this Book contains is like that of the universe, concealed from common observation yet the labors of the centuries have established its Divine origin." In A Short Scheme of the True Religion, Sir Isaac Newton wrote: "Atheism is so senseless and odious to mankind that it never had many professors."