section_path: Legacy/Fame
section_name: Fame
paragraph_text: Fame
  
  The mathematician and astronomer Joseph-Louis Lagrange frequently asserted that Newton was the greatest genius who ever lived, and once added that Newton was also "the most fortunate, for we cannot find more than once a system of the world to establish." English poet Alexander Pope wrote the famous epitaph:
  
  Nature, and Nature's laws lay hid in night. God said, Let Newton be! and all was light.
  
  But this was not allowed to be inscribed in Newton's monument at Westminster. The epitaph added is as follows:
  
  H. S. E. ISAACUS NEWTON Eques Auratus, / Qui, animi vi prope divinâ, / Planetarum Motus, Figuras, / Cometarum semitas, Oceanique Aestus. Suâ Mathesi facem praeferente / Primus demonstravit: / Radiorum Lucis dissimilitudines, / Colorumque inde nascentium proprietates, / Quas nemo antea vel suspicatus erat, pervestigavit. / Naturae, Antiquitatis, S. Scripturae, / Sedulus, sagax, fidus Interpres / Dei O. M. Majestatem Philosophiâ asseruit, / Evangelij Simplicitatem Moribus expressit. / Sibi gratulentur Mortales, / Tale tantumque exstitisse / HUMANI GENERIS DECUS. / NAT. XXV DEC. A.D. MDCXLII. OBIIT. XX. MAR. MDCCXXVI,
  
  which can be translated as follows:
  
  Here is buried Isaac Newton, Knight, who by a strength of mind almost divine, and mathematical principles peculiarly his own, explored the course and figures of the planets, the paths of comets, the tides of the sea, the dissimilarities in rays of light, and, what no other scholar has previously imagined, the properties of the colours thus produced. Diligent, sagacious and faithful, in his expositions of nature, antiquity and the holy Scriptures, he vindicated by his philosophy the majesty of God mighty and good, and expressed the simplicity of the Gospel in his manners. Mortals rejoice that there has existed such and so great an ornament of the human race! He was born on 25th December 1642, and died on 20th March 1726.
  
  In 2005, a dual survey of both the public and of members of Britain's Royal Society (formerly headed by Newton) asking who had the greater effect on the history of science, Newton or Albert Einstein, both the Royal Society members and the public deemed Newton to have made the greater overall contributions. In 1999, an opinion poll of 100 of the day's leading physicists voted Einstein the "greatest physicist ever," with Newton the runner-up, while a parallel survey of rank-and-file physicists by the site PhysicsWeb gave the top spot to Newton. New Scientist called Newton "the supreme genius and most enigmatic character in the history of science". Newton has been called the "most influential figure in the history of Western science". Einstein kept a picture of Newton on his study wall alongside ones of Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell.
  
  Physicist Lev Landau ranked physicists on a logarithmic scale of productivity ranging from 0 to 5. The highest ranking, 0, was assigned to Newton. Albert Einstein was ranked 0.5. A rank of 1 was awarded to the "founding fathers" of quantum mechanics, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Paul Dirac and Erwin Schrödinger. Landau, a Nobel prize winner and discoverer of superfluidity, ranked himself as 2.
  
  The SI derived unit of force is named the newton in his honour.
  
  Woolsthorpe Manor is a Grade I listed building by Historic England through being his birthplace and "where he discovered gravity and developed his theories regarding the refraction of light".
  
  In 1816, a tooth said to have belonged to Newton was sold for £730 in London to an aristocrat who had it set in a ring. Guinness World Records 2002 classified it as the most valuable tooth in the world, which would value approximately £25,000 (US$ 35,700) in late 2001. Who bought it and who currently has it has not been disclosed.