Editing Isaac Newton (section)

== Early life ==
{{Main|Early life of Isaac Newton}}
Isaac Newton was born (according to the [[Julian calendar]] in use in England at the time) on Christmas Day, 25 December 1642 ([[Old Style and New Style dates|NS]] 4 January 1643{{efn|name=OSNS}}) at [[Woolsthorpe Manor]] in [[Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth]], a [[Hamlet (place)|hamlet]] in the county of Lincolnshire.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Hatch |first=Robert&nbsp;A. |date=1988 |title=Sir Isaac Newton |url=http://users.clas.ufl.edu//ufhatch/pages/01-courses/current-courses/08sr-newton.htm |access-date=13 June 2023 |archive-date=5 November 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221105011958/http://users.clas.ufl.edu/ufhatch/pages/01-Courses/current-courses/08sr-newton.htm |url-status=live }}</ref> His father, also named Isaac Newton, had died three months before. [[premature birth|Born prematurely]], Newton was a small child; his mother Hannah Ayscough reportedly said that he could have fit inside a [[quart]] mug.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Storr |first=Anthony |author-link=Anthony Storr |date=December 1985 |title=Isaac Newton |journal=British Medical Journal (Clinical Research Edition) |volume=291 |issue=6511 |pages=1779–84 |doi=10.1136/bmj.291.6511.1779 |jstor=29521701 |pmc=1419183 |pmid=3936583}}</ref> When Newton was three, his mother remarried and went to live with her new husband, the Reverend Barnabas Smith, leaving her son in the care of his maternal grandmother, Margery Ayscough (née Blythe). Newton disliked his stepfather and maintained some enmity towards his mother for marrying him, as revealed by this entry in a list of sins committed up to the age of 19: "Threatening my father and mother Smith to burn them and the house over them."<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Keynes |first=Milo |date=20 September 2008 |title=Balancing Newton's Mind: His Singular Behaviour and His Madness of 1692–93 |journal=Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London |volume=62 |issue=3 |pages=289–300 |doi=10.1098/rsnr.2007.0025 |jstor=20462679 |pmid=19244857 |doi-access=free}}</ref> Newton's mother had three children (Mary, Benjamin, and Hannah) from her second marriage.{{sfn|Westfall|1980|p=55}}

=== The King's School ===
From the age of about twelve until he was seventeen, Newton was educated at [[The King's School, Grantham|The King's School]] in [[Grantham]], which taught [[Latin]] and [[Ancient Greek]] and probably imparted a significant foundation of mathematics.<ref>"Newton the Mathematician" Z. Bechler, ed., Contemporary Newtonian Research(Dordrecht 1982) pp. 110–111</ref> He was removed from school by his mother and returned to Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth by October 1659. His mother, widowed for the second time, attempted to make him a farmer, an occupation he hated.{{sfn|Westfall|1994|pp=16–19}} Henry Stokes, master at The King's School, persuaded his mother to send him back to school. Motivated partly by a desire for revenge against a schoolyard bully, he became the top-ranked student,{{sfn|White|1997|p=22}} distinguishing himself mainly by building [[sundial]]s and models of windmills.{{sfn|Westfall|1980|pp=60–62}}

=== University of Cambridge ===
In June 1661, Newton was admitted to [[Trinity College, Cambridge|Trinity College]] at the [[University of Cambridge]]. His uncle the Reverend William Ayscough, who had studied at Cambridge, recommended him to the university. At Cambridge, Newton started as a [[subsizar]], paying his way by performing [[valet]] duties until he was awarded a scholarship in 1664, which covered his university costs for four more years until the completion of his [[Master of Arts (Oxbridge and Dublin)|MA]].{{sfn|Westfall|1980|pp=71, 103}} At the time, Cambridge's teachings were based on those of [[Aristotle]], whom Newton read along with then more modern philosophers, including [[René Descartes]] and [[astronomer]]s such as [[Galileo Galilei]] and [[Thomas Street (astronomer)|Thomas Street]]. He set down in his notebook a series of "[[Quaestiones quaedam philosophicae|''Quaestiones'']]" about [[mechanical philosophy]] as he found it. In 1665, he discovered the generalised [[binomial theorem]] and began to develop a mathematical theory that later became [[calculus]]. Soon after Newton obtained his BA degree at Cambridge in August 1665, the university temporarily closed as a precaution against the [[Great Plague of London|Great Plague]].<ref>{{cite EB1911 |wstitle=Newton, Sir Isaac |volume=19 |page=583 |first=Henry Martyn |last=Taylor}}</ref>

Although he had been undistinguished as a Cambridge student, his private studies and the years following his bachelor's degree have been described as "the richest and most productive ever experienced by a scientist".<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Connor |first=Elizabeth |date=1942-01-01 |title=Sir Isaac Newton, the Pioneer of Astrophysics |url=https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1942ASPL....4...55C/abstract |journal=Leaflet of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific |volume=4 |issue=158 |pages=55 |bibcode=1942ASPL....4...55C |issn=0004-6272}}</ref> The next two years alone saw the development of theories on calculus,<ref>{{Cite web |last=Newton |first=Isaac |title=Waste Book |url=http://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-ADD-04004 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120108205159/http://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-ADD-04004/ |archive-date=8 January 2012 |access-date=10 January 2012 |publisher=Cambridge University Digital Library}}</ref> [[optics]], and the [[law of gravitation]], at his home in Woolsthorpe. The physicist Louis T. More stated that "There are no other examples of achievement in the history of science to compare with that of Newton during those two golden years."<ref>{{Cite book |last=More |first=Louis Trenchard |url=https://archive.org/details/b29977800/page/41 |title=Isaac Newton: A Biography |publisher=[[Charles Scribner's Sons]] |year=1934 |pages=41}}</ref>

Newton has been described as an "exceptionally organized" person when it came to note-taking, further [[Dog ears|dog-earing]] pages he saw as important. Furthermore, Newton's "indexes look like present-day indexes: They are alphabetical, by topic." His books showed his interests to be wide-ranging, with Newton himself described as a "Janusian thinker, someone who could mix and combine seemingly disparate fields to stimulate creative breakthroughs."<ref>{{Cite news |last=Mochari |first=Ilan |date=2015-10-19 |title=Here's How Isaac Newton Remembered Everything He Read: The scientific genius had very specific habits when he pored over books in his favorite library. |url=https://www.inc.com/ilan-mochari/how-isaac-newton-remembered-everything-he-read.html |access-date=2025-01-22 |work=[[Inc. (magazine)|Inc.]]}}</ref>

In April 1667, Newton returned to the University of Cambridge, and in October he was elected as a fellow of Trinity.<ref>{{acad|id=NWTN661I|name=Newton, Isaac}}</ref>{{sfn|Westfall|1980|p=178}} Fellows were required to take [[holy orders]] and be ordained as [[Anglicanism|Anglican]] priests, although this was not enforced in the [[Stuart Restoration|Restoration]] years, and an assertion of conformity to the [[Church of England]] was sufficient. He made the commitment that "I will either set Theology as the object of my studies and will take holy orders when the time prescribed by these statutes [7&nbsp;years] arrives, or I will resign from the college."{{sfn|Westfall|1980|p=179}} Up until this point he had not thought much about religion and had twice signed his agreement to the [[Thirty-nine Articles]], the basis of Church of England doctrine. By 1675 the issue could not be avoided, and his unconventional views stood in the way.{{sfn|Westfall|1980|pp=330–331}}

His academic work impressed the [[Lucasian Professor of Mathematics|Lucasian Professor]] [[Isaac Barrow]], who was anxious to develop his own religious and administrative potential (he became master of Trinity College two years later); in 1669, Newton succeeded him, only one year after receiving his MA. Newton argued that this should exempt him from the ordination requirement, and King [[Charles II of England|Charles II]], whose permission was needed, accepted this argument; thus, a conflict between Newton's religious views and Anglican orthodoxy was averted.{{sfn|White|1997|p=151}} He was appointed at the age of 26.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Ackroyd |first=Peter |url=https://archive.org/details/isaacnewton0000ackr/page/39 |title=Isaac Newton |date=2007 |publisher=Vintage Books |isbn=978-0-09-928738-4 |series=Brief Lives |location=London |pages=39–40 |language=en}}</ref>

As accomplished as Newton was as a theoretician he was less effective as a teacher as his classes were almost always empty. Humphrey Newton, his [[Sizar|sizar]] (assistant), noted that Newton would arrive on time and, if the room was empty, he would reduce his lecture time in half from 30 to 15 minutes, talk to the walls, then retreat to his experiments, thus fulfilling his contractual obligations. For his part Newton enjoyed neither teaching nor students. Over his career he was only assigned three students to tutor and none were noteworthy.{{sfn|White|1997|pp=164–165}}

[[File:Geographia Generalis 1733 Figures 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, and 49.jpg|thumb|Some of the figures added by Isaac Newton in his 1672 and 1681 editions of the ''[[Geographia Generalis]]''. These figures appeared in subsequent editions as well.<ref name="Warntz1989" />]]
The Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge position included the responsibility of instructing [[geography]].<ref name="Warntz1989">{{cite journal |last1=Warntz |first1=William |title=Newton, the Newtonians, and the Geographia Generalis Varenii |journal=Annals of the Association of American Geographers |date=1989 |volume=79 |issue=2 |pages=165–191 |doi=10.2307/621272 |jstor=621272 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2563251 |access-date=9 June 2024}}</ref> In 1672, and again in 1681, Newton published a revised, corrected, and amended edition of the ''[[Geographia Generalis]]'', a geography textbook first published in 1650 by the then-deceased [[Bernhardus Varenius]].<ref name="Baker1955">{{cite journal |last1=Baker |first1=J. N. L. |title=The Geography of Bernhard Varenius |journal=Transactions and Papers (Institute of British Geographers) |date=1955 |volume=21 |issue=21 |pages=51–60 |doi=10.2307/621272|jstor=621272 }}</ref> In the ''Geographia Generalis,'' Varenius attempted to create a theoretical foundation linking scientific principles to classical concepts in geography, and considered geography to be a mix between science and pure mathematics applied to quantifying features of the Earth.<ref name="Warntz1989" /><ref name="Schuchard2008">{{cite book |last1=Schuchard |first1=Margret |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CTewCQAAQBAJ&pg=228 |title=Bernhard Varenius (1622–1650) |date=2008 |publisher=Brill |isbn=978-90-04-16363-8 |editor1-last=Schuchard |editor1-first=Margret |pages=227–237 |chapter=Notes On Geographia Generalis And Its Introduction To England And North America |access-date=9 June 2024}}</ref> While it is unclear if Newton ever lectured in geography, the 1733 Dugdale and Shaw English translation of the book stated Newton published the book to be read by students while he lectured on the subject.<ref name="Warntz1989" /> The ''Geographia Generalis'' is viewed by some as the dividing line between ancient and modern traditions in the [[history of geography]], and Newton's involvement in the subsequent editions is thought to be a large part of the reason for this enduring legacy.<ref name="Mayhew2011">{{cite book |last1=Mayhew |first1=Robert J. |editor1-last=Agnew |editor1-first=John A. |editor2-last=Livingstone |editor2-first=David N. |title=The SAGE Handbook of Geographical Knowledge |date=2011 |publisher=SAGE Publications Inc. |isbn=978-1-4129-1081-1 |chapter=Geography’s Genealogies}}</ref>

Newton was elected a [[List of Fellows of the Royal Society elected in 1672|Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1672]].<ref name="frs" />