The story (popularized by Voltaire, no less!) said that Newton was inspired when he saw a falling apple while walking around his family's garden at Woolsthorpe Manor, to formulate his theory of universal gravitation (some version even claimed the apple fell on his head!). When he was 17, his mother insisted that he returned from school to run the family farm! Thankfully, Newton was a bad farmer and not long afterwards, his uncle successfully persuaded his mother to let him attend Trinity College in Cambridge instead.

The discrepancy is due to the adoption of the new Gregorian calendar. *There is controversy about this date, some said that he was born on January 4, 1643. His mother even said that Isaac was so small that he could have fit inside a quart mug. Named after his father, who died just three months before he was born, Isaac was a very small baby not expected to survive. In 1642, the year that Galileo Galilei died, Isaac Newton was born prematurely on Christmas Day*. Read on for more obscure facts about the life of Isaac Newton, the world's greatest scientist: 1. For example, did you know that Sir Isaac was an alchemist? Or that, like Einstein, he didn't have a very promising start? Or that he was obsessed with the Bible and tried to predict Armageddon?

Landing man on the moon? Don't look at Einstein - it was all done with Newtonian physics.Įven though every high school student that has ever taken physics (should) remember Newton's contributions, not many know about the man behind the science. More than any other person, Newton was single-handedly responsible for laying the the groundwork in classical mechanics, optics, and even mathematics. Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) was the greatest scientist that ever lived.

Isaac newton date of birth