Isaac Newton Biography

Here is an example of a biography written as part of our Topic work on Influential People. Read on to find out more about local scientist Isaac Newton.

22/03/2018

The Biography of Sir Isaac Newton

Have you ever heard of the influential scientist, who discovered gravity and the laws of motion? If not, Isaac Newton - who is prominent in his field - is your answer. This wise man was born on Christmas Day, 25 December, 1642 in Woolsthorpe Manor near Grantham, Lincolnshire, England. Newton didn’t just discover gravity and the laws of motion, but also a new type of Mathematics called Calculus and made breakthroughs in the areas of Optics such as the reflecting telescope. But, devastatingly, he died on the 31 March 1727 in Kensington, London, England.

   Before all of this, when Isaac was only 2 months old, his father died. Coincidentally he was also called Isaac Newton. He died in March 1643; it is unclear how or where he died. When Isaac was 3 years old, his mother remarried and moved away and left him in the care of his grandmother. In 1653 his stepfather died and soon after his mother returned to Woolsthorpe with his half-brother and 2 half-sisters. Shortly after this time, Isaac began attending a Free Grammar School in Grantham. By now his mother, who was reasonably wealthy, thought that her eldest son was the right person to manage her affairs and her estate. Newton was taken away from school, but soon showed that he had no talent, or interest, in managing estate. It’s rumoured that he preferred reading to writing and it soon became apparent that farming was not his destiny.

   When he reached the age of 19 he entered Trinity College in Cambridge, England. After receiving his bachelor's degree in 1665, when he was 23, Newton stayed to do his masters degree but an outbreak of the plague enforced the College to close. Due to this sudden incident, Newton returned to Woolsthorpe for eighteen months, from 1666 to 1667. Throughout this time, he performed basic experiments and did the thinking for his later work on gravitation. In 1687, when Isaac was 45, he discovered gravity after witnessing an apple fall from a tree. In his research he took extraordinary risks, such as staring directly at the sun and probing his eye sockets with a bodkin (a thick blunt needle with a large eye, used for drawing tape or card through the hem). He was highly competitive and had aroused disagreements with other philosophers and was a solitary, melancholy and difficult man. In 1705 on the 16 April, Queen Anne knighted Isaac at Cambridge University, surprising everyone in the audience and including Isaac himself.

   In conclusion, we all know for a fact that Isaac Newton discovered many great things, and to this day, no scientist has ever contradicted or disproved his brilliant theories. In his later memoirs Isaac wrote: “I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been like a boy playing on 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.” When Isaac died on the 31 March 1727, he was buried at Westminster Abbey Museum, London. Still today Isaac’s scientific discoveries are still celebrated through the science centre based in Woolsthorpe Manor.

By Ruby