Many centuries ago, a man witnessed an apple fall from a tree and had a scientific revelation about the way that the objects on the earth worked. This was no ordinary man: this was Isaac Newton, and this incident would lead him to formulate the law of gravity. There are many variations and controversies about the apple story, including a conspiracy that Newton himself made it up. Regardless of the origins of the story, this scenario has become the symbol of Isaac Newton’s life and person in science classes around the world. In addition to his theories of the law of gravity, he came to develop many important inventions such as the reflective telescope, calculus, planetary motion, and many theories of optics. Newton would soon become an influential figure in the scientific revolution after developing many theories, inventions, and developments in the mathematics and science fields. His contributions to science have been regarded as monumental both for his time as well as in modern science, and he is credited with building some of the foundations of science today.
Isaac Newton was born in 1642, on Christmas Day in Woolshorpe, England (Rickey 362). He was a premature baby, born to his mother, Hanna, a few months after his father passed away (Rickey 363). When Newton was three years old, his mother left him in the care of his grandmother and went off to marry a man named Reverend Barnabas Smith (Rickey 363). While she lived close by with her new wealthy husband, she did not return to Newton until he was 11, when she returned a widow with three more children (Storr 1780). This led to what many historians have noted as feelings of betrayal and resentment. In 1658 Newton returned home to help her run the family farm (Rickey 363). However, it became very apparent while he was home that he was not cut out to be a farmer, and was better suited for academia. Newton attended a variety of institutions for education and completed many academic achievements. At age twelve he was sent to live with the local apothecary in Grantham while he attended grammar school (Rickey 363). During this time, he began studying with the apothecary and reading his many books, learning subjects such as Latin. His schoolmaster in Grantham, Henry Stokes, is said to have taught the students extremely advanced mathematical equations, and therefore when Newton went off to college he already had an exceptionally high knowledge of mathematics (Rickey 363). In 1661, Newton attended Trinity College at Cambridge as a subsizar, working his way through college by performing domestic chores and services (Rickey 363). In 1665, he graduated Cambridge with a B.A. and this is also where he wrote most of his transcripts on calculus (Rickey 363). He became a Minor Fellow at Trinity College in 1667, then a Major Fellow in 1668, and in 1669 he accepted a position as a mathematics professor at Cambridge (Rickey 364). He remained there for twenty-seven years, until he left for London in 1696 to serve as the Warden of the Mint (Rickey 364). In 1703, until his death, he was President of the Royal Society (Rickey 364). On March 20, 1727, Newton died at the age of 84 and was buried in Westminster Abbey (Rickey 364). As he did not have any children during his lifetime, he left the majority of his works and possessions to his nieces and nephews.
In regards to his personality, Newton was known as an “odd character” (Hause and Maltby 295). He was also deeply religious, having studied religion and theology enough to earn his ordainment as it was required to be a fellow at Trinity College. However, his religious views were complicated and often had him accused of being a heretic. He was secretly an Arian and Unitarian and in 1662 he wrote a paper confessing to fifty-two different sins (Storr 1780). He is also known to have gone mad toward the later phase of his lifetime after suffering a nervous breakdown in 1693 (Rickey 384). This breakdown is widely believed to have been caused by mercury poisoning, as mercury was largely used in his experiments and in the confined space of his laboratory. It was mostly his contemporaries that believed him to be mad, as he exhibited many “striking abnormalities of personality” (Storr 1779). During this time, he isolated himself from his colleagues, accused his own friends of plotting against him, did not sleep, and reported hearing things that did not exist (Broad 1341). Some believe that it was largely due to his traumatic childhood that Newton went mad, and others blame it on the mercury poisoning. A test done centuries after his death revealed high amounts of mercury in strands of his hair, leading to conclusions that the mercury poisoning did indeed reach his brain function (Broad 1341). Newton did not marry, and never had any children, and therefore spent his life as a bachelor.
Newton is credited with many scientific developments. He completed the work on planetary motion that had been started by his predecessors Galileo Galilei and Johannes Kepler, formulating a costomotology that would last as the accepted truth until Einstein disproved him in 1904 (Hause and Maltby 295). His most well-known theory is the law of gravity, which states that “every body attracts every other with a force directly proportional to the square of the distance between them” (Storr 1783). His gravitational theory allowed him to develop the notion that the planets move around the sun via a gravitational pull, causing them to remain in orbit (Hause and Maltby 295). He built the first reflective telescope, using mirrors instead of lenses (Rickey 382). Other ideas for reflective telescopes had been previously designed and discussed, but Newton was the first person to physically build one. This also sparked a series of competition between Newton and other scientists, such as Guillaume Cassegrain, who each claimed that their own designs were superior to one another’s (Rickey 383). The most notable development Newton made was the publication of his Principia, which outlines the basis of all of his theories (Hause and Maltby 295). He also had an interest in alchemy.
The discoveries that Newton made and theories that he formed were a pivotal part of the scientific revolution, that had been going on during the course of his lifetime. This was a very important time in history because it saw the development of many modern ways of thinking that have gone on to form modern science. For example, people began to apply the scientific method, where a hypothesis is formulated and tested, instead of relying on tradition or mythology (Hause and Maltby 292). In addition, this movement was based on entirely new methods of thinking, whereas other previous movements such as the Renaissance were still based on traditional thought (Hause and Maltby 291). The scientific revolution subsequently changed the way that European people thought about and viewed the universe (Hause and Maltby 291), leading many people to see society and the world in different ways. This movement is not only important to Western society, but to the rest of the world as well, as the ideas of the scientific revolution are one of the only sets of ideas that have universally been adopted all over the world in non-Western countries (Hause and Maltby 292).
Works Cited
Broad, William J. “Sir Isaac Newton: Mad as a Hatter.” Science 213.4514 (1981): 1341-1344.
Hause, Stephen and Maltby, William. Western Civilization: A History of European Society.
United States: Wadsworth Publishing, 2004.
Rickey, V. Frederick. “Isaac Newton: Man, Myth, and Mathematics.” The College Mathematics
Storr, Anthony. “Sir Isaac Newton.” British Medical Journal 291.6511 (1985): 1779-1784.
