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Early discoveries Source: Kelvinsong / Wikimedia Commons Whatever happened in the two years that Newton spent away from Cambridge, he certainly made the most of this time. The apocryphal story of the apple falling from a tree inspiring Newton's discovery of the laws of gravity is said to have occurred at this time, but is almost certainly a myth. The university closed in 1665 after an outbreak of Bubonic plague ripped through England, and he returned home during this time. He later enrolled in Trinity College at the University of Cambridge, in 1661, where he studied law and paid for his education and upkeep by working as a servant and cleaning up the rooms of wealthier students. His family acquiesced and returned him to school. His early education was disrupted when his family tried to make a farmer out of him, but he found it incredibly boring. He obviously survived infancy, but spent his formative early years living with his maternal grandmother, after his mother remarried.Ī gifted child, Newton was said to be taken with building models, including a small, working flour mill that used a mouse running in a wheel for power, and an elaborate system of sundials which was accurate to the minute. Newton himself was a premature infant who was not expected to live. The son of a reasonably well-off farming family, his father died a few months before he was born. Sir Isaac Newton was born on Janu(Decemaccording to the Julian calendar used in England at the time), in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England. A decent enough student, he came upon the scientific scene just as the Scientific Revolution was hitting its stride in the 17th century, and his work could easily be considered that Revolution's apex. Responsible for discoveries in math, physics, and optics, his 1687 work Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica is considered one of the greatest scientific works ever written and lays the foundations for classical mechanics and the theory of gravity, which dominated the field of physics until Einstein's theory of relativity took its place in the early 20th century.Ĭoming from rather humble, though not impoverished, beginnings, Newton did not seem like someone destined to leave so large a mark on the field of science and math.