Sir Isaac Newton

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Sir Isaac Newton


Born: 4 Jan 1643 in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England
Knighted in 1705 by Queen Anne
Died: 31 March 1727 in London, England


Isaac Newton was born the same year as
Galileo Galilei died and three months after his father’s death. He was so tiny that no one expected him to survive.

When Newton was three years old his mother remarried and Newton’s stepfather would not take the three-year-old boy along with his mother so he had to stay with his grandparents at Woolsthorpe.

When he turned 10 he was sent to grammar school in Grantham. There he got the standard education of that time.

When he turned 17, Newton’s mother called him home to teach him about the “real” life - running the farm.
But, luckily for us, Newton wasn’t good at it and he would, instead of watching the sheep, build model waterwheels, and other things. His uncle and his school master watched him from a distance, and strongly recommended his mother to send him back to school to prepare him for university.



Newton was sent out for Cambridge early in June 1661, matriculating to Trinity College.
He entered Trinity as a subsizar, a poor student who earned his keep by performing menial tasks for fellows, fellow commoners (very rich students), and pensioners (the merely affluent).
It seems that his mother was not prepared to pay for any more of his education.

After studying the work of the French philosopher René Descartes, Newton was attracted to mechanical philosophy, and began to question the environment around him.

He had found a new passion. In order to pursue these studies, Newton needed to secure a permanent position at Cambridge. Newton was made a scholar of the house, a position that was guaranteed for at least four years.

In the summer of 1665, a plague epidemic descended on many parts of England. The sickness hit Cambridge, and the university closed down on 10th October the same year. Newton decided to return to Woolsthorpe while the university was closed.

At Woolsthorpe Newton read a book by Galileo called “Dialogue Concerning the two Chief World Systems” that dealt with that things falls to the ground. This book made him wonder if he could join this idea together with the one about how the planets circle around the sun. Could the same force that kept the moon from being thrown away from the earth apply to gravity at the earth’s surface?
Newton made the link, and called his findings the Law of Universal Gravitation. His idea and connection between the two did not just come to him in a flash of inspiration, but was developed over time even though it was famously ‘occasioned by the fall of an apple’ from a tree at Woolsthorpe.

One other thing that shows Newton’s brilliant mind is his work about the colours. He was the first person ever to explain how the rainbow appears.

Later on, he was made the head of the Royal Mint. At that time the coins were made of silver and people often cut of a piece so that they would get some c...