Sir Isaac Newton began life in the humble Protestant surroundings of Woolsthorpe, England. His father had died before he was born. At age 3, his mother remarried, leaving him with his grandparents. In grammar school, he was known mostly as a loner who liked to build inventions. At age 17, his mother, now a widow again, had him return to her to run the farm. His heart was never in farming and his mother was convinced to let him attend Cambridge. You can learn more details about Newton's early life from the BBC history of Newton.
After a year in Cambridge, the Lucasian professor of mathematics surmised that he had tremendous talents in mathematics and provided him with support. When the plague arrived at Cambridge, the school closed and Newton returned to his mother's farm in Woolsthorpe. It is during this two-year hiatus that he produce an enormous body of work that included the method of calculus. As it turns out, the method of calculus was also invented by another mathematician, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. The sad story of the war between these two makes for a classic 15th century soap opera.
Newton made many important contributions to science other than mathematics. He wrote a brillant text on the laws of optics (called Optiks) and was the inventor of the reflecting telescope, also called the Newtonian reflector. The reflecting telescope uses a parabolic mirror for the primary objective, whereas the refracting telescope, invented by Galileo, uses a lens.
Newton created his Universal Law of Gravity while in Woolsthorpe. Although there is no evidence that the farm actually had apple trees, he did deduce that there must be a "force of gravity" that made objects accelerate towards the earth. He surmised that if the force of gravity made objects near the earth's surface accelerate, then why not objects far away, such as the moon. Knowing the distance to the moon and its orbital period, he deduce the Unversal Law. (We will discuss how he did this when we reach Chapter 7.) He was the first to explain
ocean tides using his concepts of gravitational force.
Although Newton was a scientist, he was deeply religious as well. (This is not suprising considering the strict Protestant ethic in England during his time.) He had a scholarly interest in the translations of the New Testament and wrote a critique on what he considered two corruptions of the scripture which he sent to close friend John Locke. Both he and John Locke were well aware of the consequences of offending church officials, and the critique was never published in England.
Isaac Newton became a powerful figure in the British scientific community at an early age, holding positions of power at both Cambridge and the Royal Society. Although his genius was unquestionable, his abrasive and defensive personality created problems for many other scientist of his time. He died at age 85 after a series of illnesses.
Questions:
With whom did Newton prefer to keep company in his younger years at grammar school?
What did Leibnitz call Newton's cronies at Cambridge?
What advantage does the Newtonian reflector have over the refracting telescope?
What are the relative postions of the sun and moon during Neap tides?
In what country did Newton try to get his critique of the new Testament scripture published?
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Sir Isaac Newton began life in the humble Protestant surroundings of Woolsthorpe, England. His father had died before he was born. At age 3, his mother remarried, leaving him with his grandparents. In grammar school, he was known mostly as a loner who liked to build inventions. At age 17, his mother, now a widow again, had him return to her to run the farm. His heart was never in farming and his mother was convinced to let him attend Cambridge. You can learn more details about Newton's early life from the BBC history of Newton.