The color wheel was first developed by English mathematician and physicist Sir Isaac Newton, who discovered that white light (what we perceive as colorless daylight) is composed of a spectrum of ...

One of the oldest books in the exhibition is the 1704 first edition of Sir Isaac Newton’s Opticks, or, A Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections and Colours of Light.

Sir Isaac Newton invented calculus and explained optics. ... He continued working with light and color over the next few years and published his findings in "Opticks" in 1704.

Sir Isaac Newton's accomplishments border on the uncanny, as does his image in the world of science. As the historian Mordechai Feingold has written, "With time, the historical Newton receded into ...