A foresighted time ago , on December 25 , a baby son was born . He had no Earthly father , but he would go on to transform Western thought before he even turn 30 .
He also start arguably one of history’smost boring war , spent a worrying amount of time poking poppycock into his own eyeball , and was peradventure history’squietest politician . And yet despite those possibly more interesting diversions , he is most noted today for discovering the laws of gravity after an apple supposedlyfell on his oral sex . That ’s right : we ’re talking about Sir Isaac Newton .
Let ’s start at the start : yes , Newton was really born on Christmas Day , a few calendar month after the demise of his father – although owe to a papal miscalculation ( or if you ’re experience conspiratorial,300 fake yearsbeing shoved into chronicle ) we would now consider his birthday to be January 4 . While these day that ’s just the basis for afestive prank , at the time it wasconsidereda sign of heavenly favour . He was a lonely kid , which makes sense when you learn thathe once threatenedto burn down his Chrysanthemum morifolium and stepdad ’s business firm with them still indoors .
He was a keen scholar though , and in 1661 he was admit to Trinity College , Cambridge . There , he would be learn the leading scientific theories of the day , which at the sentence was still the “ Physics ” that had been written by Aristotle nigh two millennium beforehand . Newton had to count elsewhere for mental stimulation , devouringworks by Euclid , Descartes , and Kepler , and capture the eye of Cambridge ’s first - ever maths prof , Isaac Barrow . With Barrow as his wise man , Newton would develop the beginnings of what would become binomial hypothesis and calculus .
A duet of months after he calibrate , the country was hit by Plague . Just like much of the world over the past 18 month , Newton was forced to self - isolate at his kinsperson home in the res publica for the next two years . Unlike most of us , however , he did n’t spend lockdown watching reruns ofBuffy the Vampire Slayerin his pajamas . Instead , he drop his metre revolutionizing math and physics in a way that , in retrospect , pee-pee him sound completely bananas .
For example , he spenta bunch of timesticking large , blunt needle ( among other matter ) behind his eyeball just to see what would bump . He developed a “ corpuscular ” theory of light that wasmore like alchemythan skill . And he set upan experimentdesignedspecificallyto let on his eye to as intense a flack of direct sunshine as potential , leading to three days of blindness . But or else of going down in story as “ that weirdo who observe trying to blind himself ” , Newton wroteOpticks , revolutionized scientific methodological analysis and communication , and built the first known working chew over scope .
Isaac Newton was also , magnificently , kind of a jerk . He rightly get going down in story for originate his Laws of Motion , but he break the life and bequest of the friend who reintroduced him to astronomy in the first shoes just becausehe would n’t give Newton early access to his datum . He splendidly decrease out so acrimoniously with fellow physicist Robert Hooke thatit ’s saidhe ’s the reason we now have no estimate what Hooke looked like .
Despite all this , Isaac Newton never fall behind sight of his true calling : scientific discipline .
Just kidding ! While he was discovering the laws of gravitation , optic , mechanic , mathematics , and more , Newton observe busy secretly turn on what he foretell his “ Great Work ” : alchemy . He wrote around a million watchword ontopics likehow to become base alloy into gold or the nature of God and his notes included references to “ the man of ash grey ” and “ green lyons ” .
In fact , despite his legacy as one of story ’s pre - soaring scientist , the best verbal description of Isaac Newton perhaps number from John Maynard Keynes :
“ Newton was not the first of the age of reason . He was the last of the illusionist . ”
