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Mar 29, 2023 · Facts about Isaac Newton who was obsessed by power and reputation. Learn about his life; work in science, gravitation, calculus and optics.
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- Overview
- 1. His unhappy childhood helped shape his secretive personality.
- 2. Newton’s mother wanted him to be a farmer.
- 3. The Black Death inadvertently set the stage for one of his most famous insights.
- 4. As a professor at Cambridge, his lectures were poorly attended.
- 5. Newton ran the Royal Mint and had forgers executed.
- 6. He had a serious interest in alchemy.
- 7. Newton served in Parliament—quietly.
- 8. He had fierce rivalries.
- 9. Newton was knighted.
Find out more about this fascinating Englishman, from the job he held that involved sending people to the gallows to the cause of one of his most bitter rivalries.
Isaac Newton
Newton was born prematurely on Christmas Day 1642 at his family’s home, Woolsthorpe Manor, near the town of Grantham, England, several months after the death of his father, an illiterate farmer. When Newton was three, his mother wed a wealthy clergyman, Barnabas Smith, who didn’t want a stepson. Newton’s mother went to live with her new husband in ...
At age 12, Newton was enrolled in a school in Grantham, where he boarded at the home of the local apothecary because the daily walk from Woolsthorpe Manor was too long. Initially, he wasn’t a strong student; however, as the story goes, following a confrontation with a school bully Newton started applying himself in an effort to best the other boy a...
In 1665, following an outbreak of the bubonic plague in England, Cambridge University closed its doors, forcing Newton to return home to Woolsthorpe Manor. While sitting in the garden there one day, he saw an apple fall from a tree, providing him with the inspiration to eventually formulate his law of universal gravitation. Newton later relayed the apple story to William Stukeley, who included it in a book, “Memoir of Sir Isaac Newton’s Life,” published in 1752.
In 2010, a NASA astronaut carried a piece of the ancient apple tree aboard the space shuttle Atlantis for a mission to the International Space Station. The Royal Society, a scientific organization once headed by Newton, loaned the piece of the tree for the voyage, as part of a celebration of the 350th anniversary of the group’s founding. Today, the original apple tree continues to grow at Woolsthorpe Manor.
In 1669, Newton, then 26, was appointed the Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge, one of the world’s oldest universities, whose origins date to 1209. (Newton was the second person to hold the Lucasian professorship; the 17th person, from 1979 to 2009, was physicist and “A Brief History of Time” author Stephen Hawking.) Although he remaine...
In 1696, Newton was named to the job of warden of the Royal Mint, which was responsible for producing England’s currency. He left Cambridge, his long-time home, and moved to his nation’s capital city, where the mint was located in the Tower of London. Three years later, Newton was promoted to the more lucrative position of master of the mint, a pos...
In addition to the scientific endeavors for which he’s best known, Newton spent much of his adult life pursuing another interest, alchemy, whose goals included finding the philosopher’s stone, a substance that allegedly could turn ordinary metals like lead and iron into gold. He was secretive about his alchemical experiments and recorded some of his research in code.
Among his other research projects, Newton analyzed the Bible in an attempt to find secret messages about how the universe works.
From 1689 to 1690, Newton was a member of Parliament, representing Cambridge University. During this time, the legislative body enacted the Bill of Rights, which limited the power of the monarchy and laid out the rights of Parliament along with certain individual rights. Newton’s contributions to Parliament apparently were limited, though; he repor...
When it came to his intellectual rivals, Newton could be jealous and vindictive. Among those with whom he feuded was German mathematician and philosopher Gottfried Leibniz; the two men had a bitter battle over who invented calculus. Newton developed a version of calculus in the 1660s but didn’t publish his work at the time. In the 1670s, Leibniz fo...
In 1705, Newton was knighted by Queen Anne. By that time, he’d become wealthy after inheriting his mother’s property following her death in 1679 and also had published two major works, 1687’s “Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy” (commonly called the “Principia”) and 1704’s “Opticks.” After the celebrated scientist died at age 84 in March...
- When Isaac Newton was an infant, he could fit inside a quart size mug. According to his mother’s words. He was so small because he was born prematurely on December 25, 1642.
- Isaac Newton’s father was also called Isaac Newton. Young Isaac was called with the same name for the honor of his father, who passed away just three months before his birth.
- When he was just three years old, his mother Hannah Ayscough left him. She left him in the care of his maternal grandmother in order to live with her new husband.
- Isaac Newton threatened to burn down a house while his mother and stepfather were still inside. Isaac grew up having an animosity towards his stepfather, Reverend Barnabas Smith, with whom his mother had three children.
- Isaac Newton was born prematurely and was so small that people did not expect him to live. It is estimated that he may have been born up to 15 weeks early.
- Isaac Newton's father died three months before he was born. Newton's mother married again when he was three years old, but his stepfather refused to allow him to live with them.
- Isaac Newton was a stutterer. Other famous stutterers include Charles Darwin, Moses, Marilyn Monroe, and Winston Churchill.
- Newton loved to make lists. In one instance, he made a list of all his sins up to the age of 10. His dislike of his stepfather made it into the list with this entry: "Threatening my father and mother Smith to burn them and the house over them."
5 days ago · Isaac Newton, the brilliant physicist and mathematician, revolutionized our understanding of the universe with his laws of motion and universal gravitation, forever changing the course of scientific inquiry.
May 20, 2020 · Sometimes called the father of modern science, Isaac Newton revolutionized our understanding of our world. He was a real Renaissance man with accomplishments in several fields, including...
Dec 7, 2023 · Isaac Newton, a towering figure in the history of science, revolutionized our understanding of the physical world and laid the foundation for modern physics and mathematics. Born on January 4, 1643, in Woolsthorpe, England, Newton’s intellectual prowess became evident at a young age.
