Sir Isaac Newton stated that "If I have seen further it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants."    Newton's extraordinary abilities enabled him to perfect the processes of those who had come before him, and to advance every branch of mathematical science then studied, as well as to create some new subjects. Newton himself became one of those giants to whom he had paid homage.

Newton's image is set against the cover of a tome easily recognizable to those familiar with the history of mathematics -- his Principia Mathematica, The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, first published in 1687.  Its first two parts, prefaced by Newton's "Axioms, or Laws of Motion", dealt with the "Motion of Bodies". The third part dealt with "The System of the World" and included Newton's writings on the Rules of Reasoning in Philosophy, Phenomena or Appearances, Propositions I-XVI, and The Motion of the Moon's Nodes.

Inscribed over Newton's image is Newton's binomial theorem, which dealt with expanding expressions of the form (a+b) ^n.  This was Newton's first epochal mathematical discovery, one of his "great theorems". It was not a theorem in the same sense as the theorems of Euclid or Archimedes, insofar as Newton did not provide a complete "proof", but rather furnished, through brilliant insight, the precise and correct formula which could be used stunningly to great effect.

Newton is widely regarded as the inventor of modern calculus. In fact, that honor is correctly shared with Leibniz, who developed his own version of calculus independent of Newton, and in the same time frame, resulting in a rancorous dispute.

Leibniz's calculus had a far superior and more elegant notation compared to Newton's calculus, and it is Leibniz's notation which is still in use today.

Newton's portrait shares a color palette with Leibniz, the other acknowledged "inventor" of calculus, Lagrange, a pioneer of the "calculus of variations", and Laplace and Euler, two of those who built on what had been so ably begun.