It was his math contributions people liked. Particularly his invention of calculus which could be used to solve a plethora of unsolved math problems. It's not because he said things fell.
On the other hand, spontaneous generation was very much still a thing at this point, so a lot of the basic rules of the world around us were really not worked out yet
I love that Newton had to invent calculus twice, because he was trying to teach it to someone else and they weren't getting it, so Isaac got frustrated and threw the only copy of his notes into the lit fireplace.