Biography
Sir Isaac Newton was born in Woolsthorpe Manor, which was near Grantham in Lincolshire. Newton's birthday at the time he was born was actually christmas day of 1942. But this was due to the fact that the Gregorian calendar was not adopted in England until 1752. The new "corrected" date of January 4th puts his birthdate into line with our present calendar. Isaac Newton never knew his father, also named Isaac Newton, because he died in October of 1942. Just three months before his son was born. Although Isaac's father had been a wealthy man, he owned land and animals, he was completely uneducated. He was illiterate and could not even sign his own name.
Hannah Ayscough, Isaac's mother, remarried when he was 2 years old. She married to Barnabas Smith, the minister of a nearby village's church. She then left Isaac in the care of his grandmother, Margery Ayscough, at Woolsthorpe. No one doubts that Isaac held a lot of resentment toward his mother and stepfather because, when examining his sins at age 19, he wrote:
"Threatening my father and mother Smith to burn them and the house over them."
Shortly after his stepfather died in 1653 Isaac began attending the Free Grammar School in Grantham. Isaac lodged with the Clark family in Grantham, although this was only 5 miles from his home. He seems to have shown little promise in his schoolwork, his school reports described him as "idle" and "inattentive".
Then his mother, who was by now a reasonably wealthy lady in money and property, Isaac being her eldest son, was, to her, obviously the person to take over the management of the estate. He showed no interest, or talent, in the management of an estate. So an uncle, William Ayscough, persuaded his mother that it was time for Isaac to prepare to enter University. So in 1660, at the age of 17, he returned to the Free Grammar School in Grantham. This time he lodged with the headmaster of the school, Stokes, depite previously showing no academic promise. Some evidence suggests that Stokes also persuaded Isaac's mother to let him enter University, which points at the fact that maybe Isaac did better at his first try at school then the reports suggest. Another piece of evidence also comes from his list of sins:
"..setting my heart on money, learning, and pleasure more than Thee..."
which tells us that one of Isaac's passions must have been for learning.
According to Issac, this change happened when Isaac was kicked in the stomach by the school bully. Newton challenged him to a fight in the churchyard. In the words of Newton's first biographer Conduitt "Isaac... beat him 'til he declared he would fight no more." After his victory "he pulled the bully along by the ears and thrust him into a wall." But that was't enough for Isaac. He had to beat his opponent in every way possible. He began trying in classes and was soon showing his intellectual Superiority.
Newton's aim at hi uncles old college, Trinity College Cambridge, was a law degree. Instruction was dominated by the philosophy of Aristotle, but in the third year Isaac also studdied the philosophy of Descartes, Gassendi, Hobbes, and in particular Boyle. The Copernican astronomy mechanics of Galileo attracted him, as did Kepler's Optics. He recorded his thoughts in a book which he entitled Quaestiones Quaedam Philosophicae (Certain Philosophical Questions). It shows an idea of how Newton's ideas were already forming. The heading to the text was a latin term which showed himself as a free thinker. It meant "Plato is my friend, Aristotle is my friend, but my best friend is truth."
In April of 1665 Newton received his bachelor's degree from Trinity College. That summer the plague hit Cambridge and closed the school. Newton returned to Woolsthorpe Manor and for the next sixteen months Newton studied in isolation. As Newton recalls "In the beginning of the year 1665 I found the method of approximating series and the rule for reducing and dignity (or power) of any binomial inro such a series. The same year in May I found the method of tangents of Gregory and Slusis, and in November had the direct method of fluxions [calculus] and the next year in January had the theory of colors and in May following I had entrance into the inverse method of fluxions."
In 1669 Barrow resigned from his spot on the Lucasian chair and recommended that the 27 year old Newton should take his place. Newton's first work as a Lucasian Profesor was on Optics. He had reached the conclusion during the two years that the school was closed due to plague that white light was not a single simple entity. The chromatic aberration in a telescope lens is what had convinced him of this, for when he passed a beam of light through a prism, a spectrum of colors was formed.
Newton's greatest achievement was in the field of physics and celestial mechanics, which culminated in the theory of universal gravitation. By 1666, Newton had early versions of his 3 laws of motion, and had discovered the law which gives the centrifugal force on a body moving in a circular path. Although he did not understand the mechanics of circular motion correctly.
In 1693 Newton retired from research and left Cambridge to take up a government position in London becoming the Warden of the Mint in 1696 and Master in 1699. However, he did not leave his positions in Cambridge until 1701. Many people would have treated Master of the Mint as a reward for their achievements, but Newton did not. He made a strong contribution to the work of the mint, led it through a difficult time of recoinage, and was particularly active in the preventing the counterfeiting of the coinage.
In 1703 he was elected president of the Royal Society and re-elected each year until he died. He also became the first person to be knighted for his scientific achievements in 1705 by Queen Anne.
Perhaps all that is worth mentioning about his irrational temper directed at Leibniz about who invented the calculus, is how he used his position as president of the Royal Society. He brought together an "impartial" committee to decide. He wrote both the official report and the review, which were both published by the Royal Society, but of course were not under his name. Newton's assistant, Whiston, had seen this rage first hand nd wrote:
"Newton was of the most fearful, cautious and suspicious temper that I ever knew."
