👉 Newton, a 17th-century French mathematician and physicist, is known for his significant contributions to classical mechanics. He developed Newton's laws of motion, which describe the motion of bodies under the influence of forces. These laws are crucial in physics because they provide a mathematical framework for understanding the behavior of objects that interact with each other. Newton's first law states that an object at rest will remain at rest and an object in motion will continue to move at constant speed in a straight line,