Sir Isaac Newton was a critical individual to our outlook on physics and astronomy.

He
discovered what white light was made out of, gravity, and he even invented calculus. He was a loner at
Cambridge, he only was interested in his studies. He had to flee to his mother’s farmhouse to escape the
plague, and never stopped pondering. Sir Isaac made many groundbreaking discoveries there, including
his theory of gravity. Newton also had an obsession with god, and he had his own beliefs. For example,
he believed that the holy trinity was not real, he believed that god was a higher being than Jesus. At
Cambridge he also looked into alchemy. Alchemists try to make elixirs such as the philosopher’s stone,
and for turning basic metals into gold. He only shared a lot with his family and friends at the end of life.
How did this complex scientist/alchemist accomplish as much as he did?
Who was Isaac when he first went to school? Why was he distant, and what did he think of at a
young age? Isaac Newton was born on Christmas Day 1642, in Lincolnshire. Lincolnshire is a town distal
to the east of the medial line of England, superior to London and Cambridge, the college he went to.
Since there was a calendar difference, December the 25th to Sir Isaac Newton is January 4th, 1643. Little
Isaac was not a healthy baby, because he born prematurely. He was born so weak and small, that he
could fit inside a quart mug. Since he was so weak, nobody expected him to have a bright future, or a
future at all. His father, also known as Isaac, had died three months before Isaac’s birth. Isaac’s father
was a good farmer; however, he was not able to read or write, not even enough capability to sign his
own name. He was born at the beginning of the English Civil War. The monarchy was restored after
being taken down in 1649. Isaac was not directly affected by the war, but it still affected him. At age
three his mother, Hannah, got married to a minister Smith. Smith never wanted a son, so Hannah
agreed to leave Little Isaac with her parents. Little Isaac barely had a chance to see his mother and was
very lonely. He gazed upon his mother’s new home and had thoughts of contempt towards Smith.
Sometimes, he thought of burning down the house, with Smith inside. At age ten, Little Isaac was happy
when his stepfather died. When Isaac’s mother came back, she came with three half siblings, two
daughters and one son. Isaac went to the little local village school and seemed abnormally intelligent.
Hannah then decided to send him to a school seven miles away, the King’s school. Since walking seven
miles to the school was not an option, and staying at the town’s school, she sent him to live somewhere
else. He went to go live with the Clarke family. According to Catherine’s parents (the Clarks), Isaac fell in
love with Catherine. If that is true, she is the only girlfriend that Isaac had. Catherine remembered him
as “a sober, silent, thinking lad” never one to “play with the boys at their silly amusements. When he
had extra time, he built doll furniture for Catherine. Clarke (Catherine’s father) was an apothecary.
Apothecaries make medicine by combining herbs and chemicals. Isaac was fascinated by Clark’s work,
and he quickly learned basic chemistry this way. He even made his own potions, such as one he made
for tuberculosis (TB). It was made of turpentine, rose water, beeswax, olive oil, sack wine, and red
sandalwood. His elixir for the fatal disease TB actually worked! Isaac also had an interest in telling time.
Since there were not any watches or clocks, he made sundials by hammering pegs to create a sundial. It
became known as “Isaac’s dial”. He also built an indoor clock with a wooden dial turned by dripping
water. He also built a miniature windmill, with a mouse inside to run it. Isaac was not interested in the
subjects that he got taught in school, so he never studied, and that led to his position at the bottom of
the class. One day, a good student kicked him in the stomach, and Isaac challenged him to a fight. Isaac
won, surprising his classmates. However, that fight was not enough to satisfy him, he wanted to be the
best in school as well. Soon, he went from the bottom of his class to the top of his class. The main
subjects were Latin and Greek, with were useful because most of the books were written in those
languages. He most likely learned some simple arithmetic and geometry as well. At a certain point of
young Isaac’s childhood, Hannah decided that Isaac learned enough to be a successful farmer. That is
why she let Isaac go to the King’s school in the first place. Working on the farm and checking up on the
animals bored Isaac, and he consciously did a bad job. Instead of working, he built things, read a book,
or just sat there thinking. He even let the sheep devour their neighbor’s crops. His mother had to go to
court because of her son’s actions, and she had to pay a fine. Isaac was disappointing his mother as he
was learning to be a farmer.
In conclusion, Isaac lived like many regular boys in his time. He never got special treatment,
other than going to the King’s school. Isaac was never into something unless he got something out of it.
He never cared about his grades at the King’s school, because he had no interest. Without getting
kicked, who knows if he would have discovered everything that he did.

Of course, since Hannah (Isaac’s mother) was a farmer, she wanted him to follow in her
footsteps. However, the dean of the King’s School didn’t agree. Eventually, the two were able to
convince Hannah to let Isaac’s education continue, with the help of Isaac’s uncle. He went on to Trinity
College, part of Cambridge University, on a condition. Since he was going there for free, he had to serve
the wealthy students at the college, as a servant. He despised that, because all of the rich students were
more interested on having a good time, rather than a good education. John Wickins was the name of
another serious student that Isaac met. They moved in and studied together for the next twenty years.
That is not very common with Isaac because he was not the best friend. They weren’t taught about
recent things, in fact most of the writings were from two-thousand years ago, from Aristotle’s time.
Learning from Aristotle wasn’t very fortunate, since he didn’t even check his theories before he wrote
about them. There were also many scholars that were starting to make modern science, which was not
taught about, scientist wasn’t even a word! Many of those scholars that were trying to understand the
world through a different perspective often challenged Aristotle, and Aristotle often was incorrect. One
of his famous theories was that the Earth was at the center of the universe. Instead, Copernicus, one of
the daring scholars, challenged the theory with actual observations. Afterwards, numerous scholars,
such as Johannes Kepler, built off of Copernicus’s discovery. In Kepler’s case, he built upon the idea of
the planets going in circles. He tracked the orbits of the “celestial objects” and he came to the
conclusion that the planets moved in ellipses. Then Galileo found that other planets and stars had
imperfections, such as the craters and mountains of the moon, and the spots on the sun. That discovery
disproved Aristotle’s theory that other planets and the sun were perfect. Another theory that Galileo
proved wrong, is that objects of the same size a shape would fall faster if they were heavier than lighter.
Soon after reading all of those books from the library from Cambridge, he went to a fair. At this fair he
found a bookseller that sold a book on astrology, the study that the stars and planets controlled the
Earth. Isaac had to go to the lengths of learning basic math and more complex math to understand the
book that he got form the fair.
It was 1665, and the plague had become a great concern in England. The university that Isaac
Newton went to was closed, so he went back to the country, which was his home. He was quite happy
to be alone with his thoughts. Sir Isaac was thinking about many different physical problems. However,
there was a specific one that he found to be very interesting. This problem involved a cannon launching
a cannon ball in an upward direction (not straight up). When the cannon ball is fired, it is going quite
fast. As it gets higher up in the air, it decelerates until it hits its peak. Then it starts to go down towards
the earth because of gravity, accelerating as it gets closer to Earth. Then it hits the ground a its highest
velocity. He often pondered about this confusing problem. He had to think about many different
variables which confused him, but eventually, he will figure it out. When Newton was thinking, he
invented a different branch of mathematics, which he called “method of fluxions”, or in other words the
study of continual change. Nowadays, that branch of math is called calculus. It is used in many sciences,
particularly in physics. Sir Newton was also interested in studying light. With a prism he bought from the
Stourbridge Fair, he conducted many experiments. It was once believed that white light was pure,
according to Aristotle. However, he tested many basic ideas such as that one, and he found that white
light was not pure, in fact, it was actually made from all the colors of the spectrum. Isaac Newton also
discovered that once you separate white light into the other colors of the spectrum, you could put them
back together by placing a second prism in front of all the colors. Sir Newton also discovered that once
you separate the colors of the spectrum from white light and you take one of the beams of color, say
orange for example, and you put it through a second prism, it does nothing. He also uncovered the
science behind rainbows, during his childhood nobody knew why rainbows formed. He discovered that
when light form the sun passes through a rain drop, it produces the spectrum, and the spectrum is the
rainbow. As you may see, many of his experiments showed that Aristotle was wrong about many things.
Once again, Aristotle hypothesized without checking to see if he was correct. Aristotle said that
the reason objects fall, was because they had a tenancy to fall downward. However, Isaac didn’t think
that made any sense, so he tested Aristotle’s prediction. He thought that objects should not have a
tenancy to move downward, it didn’t make sense to him. He thought that there was a force that kept
things bound to Earth. Before Newton though up the idea of gravity, nobody thought that the force that
kept the Earth close to the other “celestial objects” (i.e. the moon, planets, and the sun), were even
closely related to the force that kept things falling down onto the Earth. However, nobody knows that
Isaac Newton actually did this all in one miraculous year, he might have worked on it a bit afterward.
Nobody knows because he was very inclusive about his discoveries.
After the plague and the great fire Newton returned to Cambridge in 1667. The first every
mathematics teacher at Cambridge, Isaac Barrow, encouraged him to share at least one of his
discoveries with the rest of the world. Once Barrow saw Newton’s new branch of mathematics, he was
amazed. He urged Newton to publish it, but Newton refused. All he allowed Barrow to do was to show
his work to a small group of people. After two years Barrow arranged that Newton took his place as a
professor, just as Isaac wanted. He held a few lectures and was a very dull teacher. Almost nobody came
to any of his lectures. However, Newton didn’t give the other professors and his students a second
thought, he didn’t really care much about them. Newton was extremely busy working, he didn’t even
care how his hair looked (like me) and he often wore clothes that were far too large for him. He was
concerned about his work. He sometimes forgot to eat, and he usually only got a few hours of sleep,
usually he didn’t even sleep in his bed, he just fell asleep while working. Isaac was very interested on the
way that the planets moved. That was his inspiration when he constructed a new telescope. There were
telescopes in his time, they just produced very fuzzy images that didn’t have the actual colors of the
planets in them. He discovered that the lens in the fuzzy telescope was no good at creating a clear
image, and it also acted as a prism, so it split white light into the spectrum, which messed up the colors.
Newton read about someone that had an idea about building a telescope that used a mirror instead, but
no one had ever successfully made one. He figured out how to build such a telescope using the skills
that he obtained when he built many things as a child. He was able to successfully build a better version
that he often bragged about, since it was as good as a telescope as one ten times as big with the other
model.
In 1660 the Royal Society was founded, a group of scholars that met weekly to witness
experiments and to talk in science. Their motto was “never take someone’s word for it”. All kinds of
these clubs were springing up during the “Age of Enlightenment”, which was taking place when Newton
was alive. The Royal Society was interested in his telescope, and since the society was such a prestigious
group, he let himself get persuaded to show off his new telescope. Once he donated one of his
telescopes to the society, they let him become a member (in 1672), for even the king was interested in
the telescope! However, Newton didn’t like sharing his thoughts. He needed to know that he was right,
and even when his idea was perfect, he was very reluctant to show others. He also got in a very bad
mood if someone questioned him, and he was furious when they thought that he was wrong. However,
it is a good thing that he decided to join the group, because he became much more open about his ideas
once he joined. Then he sent the other members of the society a paper about his work with light. Some
didn’t agree with him, and some even claimed that the experiments didn’t work for them. That made
Isaac feel as though he was being attacked. Robert Hooke made Newton especially angry. His job was to
demonstrate the experiments. He said that he agreed that white light wasn’t pure, but he didn’t think
that his experiments showed that. Instead of trying to come to an agreement with Hooke, they became
enemies for life, and Newton went back to working alone.
There was a rule if you taught at Cambridge like Sir Newton did. You needed to become minister
of the church at Cambridge in the course of seven years. He didn’t have much time left out of his seven
years left. He tried to get out of becoming minister because he secretly didn’t believe in the Holy Trinity.
He went to the king, since he was the head of the church, and argued that since he taught mathematics
that he should not become minister. That argument made no sense, but the king didn’t care, so he
allowed him to stay at Cambridge without becoming minister. Just as he had a secret religious side to
him, he also secretly was into alchemy. Alchemists tried to create the elixir of life and the Philosopher’s
stone, which turned ordinary metals into gold. However, alchemy led to chemistry, a very important
part of science, so not all of Sir Isaac Newton’s work with alchemy was pointless, even though he never
found an elixir of life.
After his fight with his enemy, Robert Hooke, he left the Royal Society and concentrated on his
work on alchemy. One day three important people, including Newton’s enemy, were having a
conversation. They were trying to figure out a mathematical representation of the relationship between
the force of gravity and distance. Hooke claimed that he had already done so, but the others didn’t
believe him because he once said that he had already made a telescope that had the same design as
Newton’s, and that it was so small that you could attach it to your watch. He even claimed that his
telescope worked better than Newton’s bigger model, but of course, he was lying. Since Halley, one of
the people that met at the coffeehouse, knew that Hooke was lying, he turned to Newton. He also
claimed that he figured out what the correlation of distance and gravity was using inverse square roots.
When Halley met with Newton asking him if he could share his work, Newton agreed, reluctantly, and in
a few months, he showed his work to Halley. Newton also received a very valuable book in return for his
work.
Newton decided to write a book. He was inspired by his rekindled curiosity on how the planets
moved, so he wrote a nine-page essay on his work on the subject. Then he added many of his other
revolutionary works and he created a book out of it. It was a long book that was the ground work on
physics and mathematics. Since his book was a big hit, he was elected into parliament in 1689. However,
he barely took part in his position, he only voted and never spoke during their meetings. Another thing
that happened to Newton after he published the book, is he became a legend. Everybody saw him in a
different way, and his students gazed upon him as if he were the king. However, he had a mental
breakdown one day. He wrote strange letters to his friends telling them that he hated them and that he
wanted them dead. He couldn’t even eat or sleep. By 1696 Sir Newton recovered from his mental
breakdown, and he decided that he needed a change. That’s why his friends arranged a job in which he
worked making money, literally, he worked at the Mint. The Mint was the place that all the England
coins were made in. He worked in the Mint for until he eventually became the “Master of the Mint” in
1696. In 1703 Hooke died, and in 1704 the president of the Royal Society died. Therefore, Newton was
elected to become president immediately. Then, he finally published his theory on optics.
Newton ruled the society as a tyrant, which lead to an unnecessary number of disputes. The
biggest of these disputes involved who actually discovered calculus. A German mathematician also
founded calculus, except he actually called it calculus while Newton called it “Method of Fluxions”. The
two really had a big fight. In the beginning Newton accused Leibniz of stealing his ideas. Leibniz simply
said “One man makes a contribution and another man makes another one” in one of his letters. Then
Leibniz was invited by the Royal Society to figure out who actually founded calculus. Secretly, Sir Isaac
appointed himself as the head of the committee that decided on who actually founded calculus. Then,
Sir Newton wrote the article that was to be published with twisted evidence in his favor. Later on, Sir
Isaac fondly remembers “breaking his heart”. However, he wasn’t completely correct. Leibniz’s way of
calculus is used today, not Newton’s. It was easier to understand for most people. Leibniz’s name for
calculus even stuck (calculus was what he called it).
At the end of his life he became wealthy and powerful. He even was knighted by Queen Anne,
he became Sir Isaac Newton. He died on March 20th, 1727, at age eighty-five. He got the honor of
receiving a burial in London’s Westminster Abbey, being the first scientist to be buried there. On his
fancy marble monument, the words inscripted are “Here is buried Isaac Newton, Knight, who by a
strength of mind almost divine…explored…what no scholar had previously imagined.”
In conclusion, Isaac newton is a very unique, and we would be behind without him! Without his
study on lenses and gravity, we would be many years behind, he laid down the groundwork for all the
scientists that came before him. However, he was far from perfect. He studied alchemy for years
pointlessly, and he was an unfair president of the Royal Society. He also had problems and rivalries like
everybody else. His rival was Hooke and he had a mental breakdown that led to him leaving Cambridge
(he quit, he didn’t get fired). Even through all that he had many accomplishments. He even was the first
scientist to have the honor of being buried in London’s Westminster Abbey, he even was knighted by
Queen Anne.