Isaac Newton

Light. Gravity. Calculus.  These three things we contend with every moment of everyday, but rarely do any of us think about how we interact with them.   They are so essential to our earthly existence that we don't even seem to notice them.  Our lack of thought regarding them is most likely because there is one man who did the majority of the mental work for us over 300 years ago.  That man is Isaac Newton.
When I say "Isaac Newton," what is the first thing you think of?

Was it an apple?

The fabled tale of Isaac Newton and his afternoon nap doesn't begin under the apple tree.  It begins in the winter of 1643 in the small town of Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England.  On the cold wintery day of January 4th, a  young widow named Hannah Newton gave birth to a weak, premature baby boy, naming him after his deceased father, Isaac Newton.  Isaac wasn't expected to live, but against the odds of time and place he survived.
PictureWoolsthorpe, England, where Newton was born is in the province of Lincolnshire highlighted in red.
Eventually his mother remarried, but left Isaac in the care of his grandmother. The stepfather also died a few years later when Isaac was a young man,  and so Isaac was expected to take over the family farm, but... (EPIC FAIL alert!) he was a terrible farmer, so his mother sent him back to school.  In 1665 Newton graduated from Cambridge University , but instead of being able to continue on with graduate studies, he had to return home. The university was closed for two years because of the plague.  In those two years at home, waiting for the university to reopen, Newton didn't just sit around eating popcorn and watching reruns of Family Guy.  Instead he invented calculus.  (If you're interested in learning a bit more about calculus, watch a cool Khan Academy video about Usain Bolt here.
Picture
A replica of Newton's telescope.

Works Cited

Story Resources:
"Isaac Newton Biography." Biography.com. A&E Networks Television, 2013. Web. 12 Dec. 2013. <http://www.biography.com/people/isaac-  newton-9422656?page=1>.

Krull, Kathleen, and Boris Kulikov. Isaac Newton. New York: Viking, 2006. Print.

Images Used:


Page created by Rachael R. - from Wisconsin. I picked Isaac Newton to study because he was a real genius and discovered a lot of great things, including Calculus and the Laws of Motion. I like fishing and my dog.