Sir Isaac Newton (Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, c. 1642-Kensington, London, 1727) was an English physicist, philosopher, theologian, inventor, alchemist, and mathematician. He is the author of Philosophiæ naturalis principia mathematica, better known as Principia, where he describes the law of universal gravitation and established the foundations of classical mechanics by means of the laws that bear his name. Among his other scientific discoveries, the works on the nature of light and optics (which are mainly presented in his work Opticks) and the development of mathematical calculus stand out.

In addition, he developed an important study of alchemy, to which he dedicated a lot of time and for which he had a laboratory built where he could experiment first-hand. Thousands of manuscript pages dedicated to alchemy are preserved and are being digitized today.