The really, really magnificent ones only happen every once in a great while. The great leaders, or athletes, or entertainers, throughout history. In this case, a scientist, as Christmas Day is also Sir Isaac Newton’s birthday. He came into this world in 1642.
He has been, undoubtedly, one of the most influential scientists of all time. He is best known, I’d say, for his Laws of Motion. But he did so much more. Newton formulated universal gravitation. He didn’t get hit on the head by an apple, by the way. He saw one fall, which isn’t quite as interesting, but that is how storytelling goes.
Anyway, Newton did a lot. He used his mathematical description of gravity to derive Kepler’s laws of planetary motion; he applied that gravity equation to account for tides, and the trajectories of comets. And on and on. There was all his work that focused on removing all doubt about the Solar System’s heliocentricity. We are on a ball, going around the sun, and not the sun going around us. Yes. He was a wizard.
He was smart across a wide span of things. Newton built the first practical reflecting telescope. And he also developed that theory of color based on the observation of a prism. That white light separates into the colors of the spectrum ROYGBIV. He made the first theoretical calculation of the speed of sound. I could go on, but I don’t want you to drift off and go read about Aunt Edna’s gout on Facebook.
So. Back to his life. Isaac Newton was born in England. The exact place was a little hamlet in the county of Lincolnshire. His father was also named Isaac Newton, and he had died three months before Isaac was born. I’m not sure how, and history doesn’t seem to know either. But Isaac never knew Isaac, his real dad, his namesake.
But our Isaac came into the world very lightly. He was small, small — born prematurely. His mother, whose name was Hannah Ayscough, often said that he could have fit inside “a quart mug.” Which makes you wonder if she wore her party hat on a regular basis.
Okay, maybe she wasn’t dipping into the ale all the time. She went and married a preacher, the Reverend Barnabas Smith, when Isaac was only three years old. Mother Hannah decided to move away with Reverend Smith too. She left Isaac behind in the care of his maternal grandmother, Margery Ayscough (née Blythe).
It sounds to me like the new guy wanted a family of his own loins. Hannah and the Rev had three children (Mary, Benjamin, and Hannah) away from little Isaac.
They sent him away to school until he was seventeen — The King’s School at Grantham. But then the Reverend Smith died too. I’m beginning to wonder about Hannah’s cooking.
By October 1659, Isaac’s widowed mother attempted to make him a farmer. And he hated the idea. It was about then, when Henry Stokes, the master at The King’s School, persuaded his mother to send him back. He became the top-ranked student by doing things such as building sundials and models of windmills. They say he was bullied there, and succeeding in academics was his way of pushing back.
The rest of his life is filled with more studies, colleges, learning. And then, of course, he started applying his marvelous mind to the world around him.
He never married, and his friend Voltaire was told by the physician at his deathbed that Isaac said he’d never been with a woman. There is speculation in the other direction, however.
Finally, he died in his sleep in London on March 20, 1727. He was 84. I think Isaac Newton was one of the greatest minds in all the history of mankind, and it was fitting that he’d be born on Christmas day. A little gift, under the tree. Even if it were an apple tree.
==========
The proper method for inquiring after the properties of things is to deduce them from experiments.
— Isaac Newton
==========
I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people.
— Isaac Newton
==========
We build too many walls and not enough bridges.
— Isaac Newton
==========
The science man who knew how to keep his feet on the ground.
