On Christmas day by the georgian calender in the manor house of
Woolsthorpe, England, Issaac Newton was born prematurely. His father had
died 3 months before. Newton had a difficult childhood. His mother, Hannah
Ayscough Newton remarried when he was just three, and he was sent to live
with his grandparents. After his stepfather's death, the second father who
died, when Isaac was 11, Newtons mother brought him back home to
Woolsthorpe in Lincolnshire where he was educated at Kings School,
Newton came from a family of farmers and he was expected to continue the
farming tradition , well that's what his mother thought anyway, until an uncle
recognized how smart he was. Newton's mother removed him from grammar
school in Grantham where he had shown little promise in academics.
Newtons report cards describe him as 'idle' and 'inattentive'. So his uncle
decided that he should be prepared for the university, and he entered his
uncle's old College, Trinity College, Cambridge, in June 1661. Newton had to
earn his keep waiting on wealthy students because he was poor. Newton's
At Cambridge, Isaac Barrow who held the Lucasian chair of Mathematics
took Isaac under his wing and encouraged him. Newton got his
undergraduate degree without accomplishing much and would have gone on
to get his masters but the Great Plague broke out in London and the students
were sent home. This was a truely productive time for Newton. He
conducted experiments on sunlight and prisms. He discovered that sunlight
was made up of different colors. This lead to his work on reflecting
telescopes. At the same time he was working out his ideas of planetary
He returned to Cambridge in 1667 and became the a fellow, earned his MA
and the following year became the chair of the math department. he then
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