Early History
Newton's birthplace.
http://www.aboutbritain.com/towns/Woolsthorpe.asp
Born on Christmas Day, 1642, Isaac Newton spent his early childhood in a small farm-house in the hamlet of Woolsthope, sixty miles northwest of Cambridge and one hundred miles from London. Newton's biological father died before he was born and his mother remarried two years later to the Reverend Barnabas Smith. Newton attended the King's School at Grantham at the age of twelve but was brought home by his mother at nearly the age of sixteen to manage the estate. Luckily for science, Newton showed little interest in farming. Newton's childhood acquaintances remember him building a model windmill, ingenious water-mill and many sun-dials (North 5-8).
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St Mary's, |
Newton, as an unsuccessful farmer, entered Trinity College at the age of eighteen. He went as a subsizer (one who runs errands to pay for college). Here Newton studied Sanderson's Logic and Kepler's Optics along with a number of leading edge theories at the time. Newton was Lucasian Professor of Mathematics in Cambridge by 1663. In 1665 the Great Plague struck England and Newton retired to Woolsthorpe to lived in seclusion. Here Newton made some of the greatest discoveries of his career (North 9-12). |
