Isaac Newton: Who He Was, Why Apples Are Falling
Sir Isaac Newton was born especially tiny but grew into a massive intellect and still looms large, thanks to his findings on gravity, light, motion, mathematics, and more.
Isaac Newton Kneller Painting
Far more than just discovering the laws of gravity, Sir Isaac Newton was also responsible for working out many of the principles of visible light and the laws of motion, and contributing to calculus.
Photograph of Sir Godfrey Kneller painting by Science Source
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By Kate Ravilious
Thursday, March 12, 2020
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Legend has it that Isaac Newton formulated gravitational theory in 1665 or 1666 after watching an apple fall and asking why the apple fell straight down, rather than sideways or even upward.
«He showed that the force that makes the apple fall and that holds us on the ground is the same as the force that keeps the moon and planets in their orbits,» said Martin Rees, a former president of Britain’s Royal Society, the United Kingdom’s national academy of science, which was once headed by Newton himself.
«His theory of gravity wouldn’t have got us global positioning satellites,» said Jeremy Gray, a mathematical historian at the Milton Keynes, U.K.-based Open University. «But it was enough to develop space travel.»
Isaac Newton, Underachiever?
Born two to three months prematurely on January 4, 1643, in a hamlet in Lincolnshire, England, Isaac Newton was a tiny baby who, according to his mother, could have fit inside a quart mug. A practical child, he enjoyed constructing models, including a tiny mill that actually ground flour—powered by a mouse running in a wheel.
Admitted to the University of Cambridge on 1661, Newton at first failed to shine as a student.
In 1665 the school temporarily closed because of a bubonic plague epidemic and Newton returned home to Lincolnshire for two years. It was then that the apple-falling brainstorm occurred, and he described his years on hiatus as «the prime of my age for invention.»
Despite his apparent affinity for private study, Newton returned to Cambridge in 1667 and served as a mathematics professor and in other capacities until 1696.
Isaac Newton: More than Master of Gravity
Decoding gravity was only part of Newton’s contribution to mathematics and science. His other major mathematical preoccupation was calculus, and along with German mathematician Gottfried Leibniz, Newton developed differentiation and integration—techniques that remain fundamental to mathematicians and scientists.
Meanwhile, his interest in optics led him to propose, correctly, that white light is actually the combination of light of all the colors of the rainbow. This, in turn, made plain the cause of chromatic aberration—inaccurate color reproduction—in the telescopes of the day.
To solve the problem, Newton designed a telescope that used mirrors rather than just glass lenses, which allowed the new apparatus to focus all the colors on a single point—resulting in a crisper, more accurate image. To this day, reflecting telescopes, including the Hubble Space Telescope, are mainstays of astronomy.
Following his apple insight, Newton developed the three laws of motion, which are, in his own words:
- Newton’s Law of Inertia: Every object persists in its state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed upon it.
- Newton’s Law of Acceleration: Force is equal to the change in momentum (mV) per change in time. For a constant mass, force equals mass times acceleration [expressed in the famous equation F = ma].
- Newton’s Law of Action and Reaction: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Newton published his findings in 1687 in a book called Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy) commonly known as the Principia.
«Newton’s Principia made him famous—few people read it, and even fewer understood it, but everyone knew that it was a great work, rather like Einstein’s Theory of Relativity over two hundred years later,» writes mathematician Robert Wilson of the Open University in an article on a university website.
Isaac Newton’s «Unattractive Personality»
Despite his wealth of discoveries, Isaac Newton wasn’t well liked, particularly in old age, when he served as the head of Britain’s Royal Mint, served in Parliament, and wrote on religion, among other things.
«As a personality, Newton was unattractive—solitary and reclusive when young, vain and vindictive in his later years, when he tyrannized the Royal Society and vigorously sabotaged his rivals,» the Royal Society’s Rees said.
Sir David Wallace, director of the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Cambridge, U.K., added, «He was a complex character, who also pursued alchemy»—the search for a method to turn base metals into gold—»and, as Master of the Mint, showed no clemency towards coiners [counterfeiters] sentenced to death.»
In 1727, at 84, Sir Isaac Newton died in his sleep and was buried with pomp and ceremony in Westminster Abbey in London.
Photograph of Sir Godfrey Kneller painting by Science Source
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Newton’s apple: The real story
We’ve all heard the story. A young Isaac Newton is sitting beneath an apple tree contemplating the mysterious universe. Suddenly – boink! -an apple hits him on the head. “Aha!” he shouts, or perhaps, “Eureka!” In a flash he understands that the very same force that brought the apple crashing toward the ground also keeps the moon falling toward the Earth and the Earth falling toward the sun: gravity.
Or something like that. The apocryphal story is one of the most famous in the history of science and now you can see for yourself what Newton actually said. Squirreled away in the archives of London’s Royal Society was a manuscript containing the truth about the apple.
It is the manuscript for what would become a biography of Newton entitled Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton’s Lifewritten by William Stukeley, an archaeologist and one of Newton’s first biographers, and published in 1752. Newton told the apple story to Stukeley, who relayed it as such:
“After dinner, the weather being warm, we went into the garden and drank thea, under the shade of some apple trees…he told me, he was just in the same situation, as when formerly, the notion of gravitation came into his mind. It was occasion’d by the fall of an apple, as he sat in contemplative mood. Why should that apple always descend perpendicularly to the ground, thought he to himself…”
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The Royal Society has made the manuscript available today for the first time in a fully interactive digital form on their website at royalsociety.org/turning-the-pages. The digital release is occurring on the same day as the publication of Seeing Further (HarperPress, £25), an illustrated history of the Royal Society edited by Bill Bryson, which marks the Royal Society’s 350th anniversary this year.
So it turns out the apple story is true – for the most part. The apple may not have hit Newton in the head, but I’ll still picture it that way. Meanwhile, three and a half centuries and an Albert Einstein later, physicists still don’t really understand gravity. We’re gonna need a bigger apple.
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The true story of Newton, the apple and gravity
When we speak of gravity, we come to mind the image of Isaac Newton sitting under a tree thinking about life or about the Universe, probably. When suddenly an apple falls from that tree and hits his head, then he quickly links what has happened to his previous studies and an idea arises that will later analyze much more thoroughly with new research and bring with it a revolution in thought, An elegant theory capable of better explaining the behavior of the world and the Universe: gravity.
However, we are not sure that it has happened in such a way. Who says it was that way? In fact, Newton did not leave some writing that verified — or at least not so beautiful and surprising. However, the Royal Society of London works on the digitization of the original writing to make it available to the public and then we will realize for ourselves that there was not an apple falling on his head. This one says that in effect, in 1666, an apple was detached from a tree of the house of its mother, to be more precise. When she saw it fall, it was when she began to become interested in gravity, or rather to perfect her studies.
Going a little further back in time, Newton moved from Cambridge to Grantham, to his mother’s house, since he had obsessed the orbit of the Moon around the Earth and in his home could not study it to perfection. Right there, after seeing the apple fall, associated it with mathematics and began the studies that would culminate in the approach of the Law of Universal Gravitation. However, Newton never asserted that his studies followed with apples, this idea was born of a particular story later written by an archaeologist friend of Newton, called William Stukeley who also wrote the biography of the scientist.
Stukeley befriended Newton for the admiration he had, followed him like a true fan until he managed to get a dinner with him. From there one could derive the myth of the apple, since the man tells that after dinner, they went for a walk and had tea under an enormous apple tree. While there, they spoke of Newton’s thoughts when, looking at an apple above them, the scientist brought up gravity and then asked the young man, «Why does that apple always descend perpendicular to the earth?» He answered himself, saying that there was surely a power of attraction between matter and the center of the Earth, therefore, «this apple falls perpendicularly or towards the center. If matter attracts matter, it must be proportional, therefore, the apple draws the Earth, just as the Earth draws the apple, it is reciprocal. «
That story is the closest to the apple and its relation to Newton and his laws; However, there were other times in Newton’s life when the fruit of discord was the protagonist. It is said that an occasion had to entertain the husband of his niece so he told a story in which he described that an apple had fallen on his head and then his studies made sense, he said this when he saw an apple on the table And so his assumptions about gravity came out again in casual conversation.
50 years later, Newton recalled his love for anecdotes and wondered if it had really happened or whether it was the product of his invention and the need to entertain his friends. Well, perhaps it happened, but no doubt the whole story or as we know it, was an invention of the scientist, according to Keith Moore, archival chief of the Royal Society. In addition, the story was also related to the biblical account of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, why? Newton had very extreme views on religion, so the relationship between his studies and his «fixation» with apples has more than one derivation.
Thus, the story of the apple that explains that an object similar to the Earth that attracts to the center of this, is possibly one of the fictitious stories more counted in the world like a real fact. Although not so far removed from what actually happened, Newton put his own touch of interest that to tell the truth, is much more entertaining and interesting than the simple fact of seeing an apple fall in the distance.
If a quality had Isaac Newton was the patience with which he developed in terms of his studies, in part said quality was inherited by Johannes Kepler, the man who discovered the order of the Universe.
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SHORT SUMMARY:
On a warm evening in 1666, just after dinner, the soon to be famous Isaac Newton sat down beneath this tree outside of Trinity to mull over his thoughts, when all of a sudden he was struck on the top of his head by a large, red apple. ‘Eureka’, he cried, and Gravity was discovered. As entertaining as this tale is, Newton was not struck on the head by an apple and he was not underneath this tree. In fact, no such tree existed in Cambridge at the time. But in just half a century, this grand myth was woven by his admirers from its original simple story. This tree is a grafted descendant of the original one at the home of Sir Isaac Newton’s mother in Woolsthrope, Lincolnshire. On a visit to his mother’s garden during his Cambridge days in the late 1660s, he observed a green apple fall from a tree and only then began to consider the mechanism that drove what is now termed Gravity.
Do please download the pdf or full powerpoint presentation illustrating this subject which you will find useful to use for a class:
STORY CONTENT:
When Was Newton Born?
Isaac Newton, regarded as one of the most influential scientists of all time was actually born on Christmas Day 1642, despite it being converted to January 4th in the New Style (modern) calendar, which had not been adopted in England yet. He was subsequently baptised on New Year’s Day.
The Theory of Universal Gravity
As the legend goes, a young Isaac Newton was sitting beneath an apple tree contemplating the mysterious universe when suddenly an apple hit him on the head at which point he realised that the same force causing the apple to fall kept the moon falling towards the Earth and the Earth falling towards the sun: ‘Eureka.’ Descendants of the original tree can be found in Cambridge and a piece of the original was even loaned by the Royal Society to NASA who took it into space!
Commomorative Apple Tree at Trinity College, Cambridge
Weight is the force of gravity on an object so if you weigh 100 pounds on Earth, you only weigh 38 pounds on Mars because it has less gravity. An interesting fact is that the gravity of the moon causes ocean tides!
The Falling Apple and Discovering Gravity- What really happened?
Isaac Newton, never kept any record of what happened that fateful day in the late 1660s when he was inspired by an apple falling from a tree. Therefore, there exist numerous accounts from his acquaintances and admirers—each recounting a different experience.
John Conduitt’s Account
The earliest of these accounts was recorded in 1726 in the notes of John Conduitt, a Cambridge student. In this year of Newton’s death, Conduitt wrote, ‘the first thought of his system of gravitation which he hit upon by observing an apple fall from a tree.’ He didn’t specify which tree or where the apple fell. Only a year later, Voltaire used his artistic license to parade Newton’s magnanimous discovery, in his Essay on Epic Poetry (1727), ‘Sir Isaac Newton walking in his gardens, had the first thought of his system of gravitation, upon seeing an apple falling from a tree.’ Again, Voltaire didn’t specify how the apple fell, but specified his gardens in Lincolnshire.
William Stukely’s Account
One of the most reputed accounts of Newton and the apple is in William Stukely’s Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton’s Life (1752). Stukely was a good friend of Newton’s and a scholar of archaeology. He recalled, ‘After dinner, the weather being warm, we went into the garden, and drank tea under the shade of some apple trees, only he, and myself. Amidst other discourse, he told me, he was just in the same situation, as when formerly, the notion of gravitation came into his mind. «Why should that apple always descend perpendicularly to the ground,» thought he to himself: Occasion’d by the fall of an apple, as he sat in a contemplative mood: «Why should it not go sideways, or upwards? But constantly to the earths centre? Assuredly, the reason is, that the earth draws it. There must be a drawing power in matter. And, the sum of the drawing power in the matter of the earth must be in the earth’s center, not in any side of the earth. Therefore dos this apple fall perpendicularly, or toward the center. If matter thus draws matter; it must be in proportion of its quantity. Therefore the apple draws the earth, as well as the earth draws the apple.»
So where is this famous tree?
The tree described in Stukely’s account, still exists today! It is over 350 years old, and is protected by the National Trust.
After the death of Newton’s mother in 1679, her property was soon acquired by the Woolerton family, who were tenant farmers. The family cared for both the tree and the house from the 1750s until 1947. In 1816, the tree was blown over in a storm, but successfully re-rooted, where it still stands today.
The Newton Apple Tree at Trinity College, was grafted from the original tree and planted in 1954. The tree is of the Flower of Kent variety, which doesn’t produce apples for eating, but cooking apples which are green, not red (as in the original story).
So why did this myth evolve?
In an interview with the Independent, Royal Society head archivist, Keith Moore explained, ‘The story was certainly true, but let’s say it got better with the telling.» The story of the apple fitted with the idea of an Earth-shaped object being attracted to the Earth. It also had a resonance with the Biblical account of the tree of knowledge, and Newton was known to have extreme religious views’.
Newton’s Theory of Light
Isaac Newton was the first scientist to discover that light is made up of particles, not waves, in an experiment using two glass prisms. His findings led him to conclude that light is composed of coloured particles that combine to appear white. So now when you see white light, you can imagine that it is actually made up of lots of different coloured particles including red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. Now look out for rainbows because the water droplets (rain) and sunlight act in the same way as the glass prisms and white light to create those wonderful seven colours. Newton is said to have bought his prisms from Stourbridge Fair in Cambridge, which he used to conduct his experiments.
First Functioning Telescope
Isaac Newton’s reflecting telescope, 1668
Photograph © Andrew Dunn, 5 November 2004
Scientists had struggled for years with building an effective telescope because they used a glass lens which distorted the picture quality due to white light being split into colours. Newton replaced the lens with a metal mirror which reflected a lot more light and consequently gave a better view of the sky.
The Philosopher’s Stone
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Book Cover
Isaac Newton may not have known about Harry Potter, however, following his death it became apparent that he had written lots of papers on the Philosopher’s Stone. Newton was a firm believer in alchemy and one of his greatest ambitions was to gain the secret of turning common metals into gold. He was also interested in discovering an elixir of life.
Laboratory on Fire
Isaac Newton once told a story of how his dog set his laboratory on fire, ruining twenty years of research. When he saw what man’s best friend had done, Newton is said to have said. ‘O Diamond, Diamond, thou little knowest the mischief thou hast done.’ Some historians believe that a more likely story is that he left a window open and a gust of wind knocked over a lit candle. The story of the dog was merely an excuse for his own mistake!
Isaac Newton the farmer?
Newton’s mother expected her son to take over control of the estate his father had left behind having been a successful farming family. Isaac did try to fulfil his mother’s wishes, but his lack of interest in the subject meant he was a very poor farmer. Newton’s Uncle and Head teacher from school eventually managed to convince his mother to let him go to college.
Newton’s Tooth
Isaac Newton has the most valuable tooth of all time. One of his teeth was sold in 1816 at auction for approximately $3,600 or $35,000 in today’s terms!
Newton at Cambridge
Photograph © Andrew Dunn, 5 November 2004
Isaac Newton entered Trinity College in 1661 and acted as a sizar or servant for socially superior fellow-students or for tutors in order to pay for his university education. He further supported himself with a small money-lending operation. Newton was driven by the belief that the path to true knowledge lay in making observations rather than reading books. On one occasion, rather than trust books on optics, he experimented by sticking a bodkin – a blunt needle – in his eye to see its effect! He almost blinded himself.
Newton’s Bad Temper
Isaac had a very bad temper and became particularly angry with Robert Hooke who was also part of the Royal Society because he accused Newton of stealing his ideas on the laws of gravity. By the time of Hooke’s death, Newton was president of the Royal Society and he had all of Hooke’s portraits destroyed!
The Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica
Newton’s studies culminated in this famous publication regarded as one the most influential books of all time. It took Newton two years to write and it represented a combination of more than 20 years of thinking – it outlined his own theory of calculus, the three laws of motion and his theory of universal gravitation. This provided a new revolutionary mathematical description of the Universe, one that is still being used today. Einstein regarded Isaac Newton as one of the best people to have lived.
Tributes and Memories of Newton in Cambridge
In Trinity College there are five portraits of Newton, a commemorative apple tree and a famous statue of him, which can be seen in the Chapel.
Statue of Isaac Newton by Louis-François Roubiliac in Trinity College Chapel, Cambridge
Photograph © Vygosky 22 July 2014
The Wren Library at Trinity College contains the largest intact portion of Newton’s library, and some papers which can be viewed by appointment. Also contains a display of Newtown memorabilia including walking sticks, watches, mathematical instruments and a lock of hair.
Photograph © Andrew Dunn, 5 November 2004
The most complete collection of Newton’s scientific papers can be found in Cambridge University Library and some of his work and one of his portraits can be seen at the University Library’s ‘Lines of Thought’ exhibition from March-September 2016.
The Whipple Museum contains a replica Newtonian reflecting telescope and a number of portraits of Newton. http://www.hps.cam.ac.uk/whipple/
For more information about visiting these places see the Discover More section below.
POTENTIAL QUOTES FOR POETS AND COMPOSERS:
Sir Isaac Newton -Copyright 1997 David Arns
Under a spreading apple tree,
The village genius stands;
His mind conceives of wondrous things,
He writes them with his hands;
His fame goes forth to all the world—
He’s known in many lands.
A tiny babe on Christmas Day
in 1642
Was born to Mrs. Newton
while outside, the cold winds blew.
And on the farm, through childhood,
precocious Isaac grew.
And after chores, he built devices
to see just how they worked,
To see what laws of nature
underneath the workings lurked.
(When people called them «toys,» that’s what
got Isaac really irked.)
His mother saw he was no farmer,
sent him off to school;
He quickly showed at Cambridge
that he was nobody’s fool:
He began to bring to light the laws
that all of nature rule.
In one chapter in his story
(though apocryphal, it’s said),
An apple, falling from a tree
impacted on his head,
Which drew his thoughts to gravity,
and we all know where that led.
He wondered if, by any chance,
the self-same gravitation
That pulls an apple to the ground,
affected all creation:
The moon, the planets, and the sun. . .
Thus went his cogitation.
He determined that the gravity
of earth indeed controls
The orbit of our moon, as ’round
the earth it ever rolls.
Now, describing it mathematically
was one of Newton’s goals.
He discovered that the math you need
to show the laws of nature,
Surpassed the knowledge of that day;
the cosmos’ legislature
Required new math, so Newton wrote
his «fluxions» nomenclature.
He talked of falling bodies
and his famous Laws of Motion,
And of colors seen in bubbles
and the tides upon the ocean.
And his crowning jewel, «Principia,»
created great commotion.
Yes, Newton’s brilliant mind, it was
a trunk with many twigs—
His mind branched out in every way
(right through his powdered wigs).
His greatest contribution, though,
was cookies made from figs.
Discover More
LOCAL PLACE:
Trinity College, Cambridge, CB2 1TQ
Where you can find Newtonian items in Cambridge:
The Wren Library contains the largest intact portion of Newton’s library, and some papers which can be viewed by appointment. Also contains a display of Newtown memorabilia including walking sticks, watches, mathematical instruments and a lock of hair.
Cambridge University Library: http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/
The most complete collection of Newton’s scientific papers can be found in Cambridge University Library.
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