It was a warm afternoon in late summer. Sitting in the orchard, Isaac Newton watched an apple fall to the ground. He was in a contemplative mood.
"Why should that apple always descend perpendiculary to the ground?", he thought... "Why not sideways or upwards ?"
Like other geniuses, Newton had the power to see beyond a simple phenomenon like the fall of an apple, and to explore its widest implications. He went on to establish laws of gravity, which he used to explain the Universe.
Isaac Newton was born on Christmas Say, 1642. His father was a farmer. He studied mathematics at Cambridge University. But in 1655 England was ravaged by the Great Plague and the University was closed for fear of infection.
Newton spent those eighteen months at home in his village. It was there, between the ages of 22 and 24, that he made the three discoveries which were to influence science and human thought from that day to this: the discovery of the differential Calculus, the nature of white light (why we see a rainbow in a drop of water) and the laws of gravity.
Newton lived to a great age and was a revered mathematican, but he was humble about his achievements. Shortly before his death he wrote: 'to myself I seem to have been only like a boy, playing on the the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.'
White light passing through a triangular prism. Newton investigating light.
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