And he set up an experiment designed specifically to expose his eyes to as intense a blast of direct sunlight as possible, leading to three days of blindness. He developed a “corpuscular” theory of light that was more like alchemy than science. Instead, he spent his time revolutionizing math and physics in a way that, in retrospect, makes him sound completely bananas.įor example, he spent a bunch of time sticking large, blunt needles (among other things) behind his eyeballs just to see what would happen. Unlike most of us, however, he didn’t spend lockdown watching reruns of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in his pajamas. Just like much of the world over the past 18 months, Newton was forced to self-isolate at his family home in the country for the next two years. Why Do We Think There Is A Possible Planet X?Ī couple of months after he graduated, the country was hit by Plague. With Barrow as his mentor, Newton would develop the beginnings of what would become binomial theory and calculus. Newton had to look elsewhere for mental stimulation, devouring works by Euclid, Descartes, and Kepler, and catching the eye of Cambridge’s first-ever math professor, Isaac Barrow. There, he would be taught the leading scientific theories of the day, which at the time was still the “ Physics” that had been written by Aristotle nearly two millennia beforehand. He was a keen student though, and in 1661 he was admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge. He was a lonely kid, which makes sense when you learn that he once threatened to burn down his mum and stepdad’s house with them still inside. While these days that’s just the basis for a festive prank, at the time it was considered a sign of heavenly favor. Let’s start at the beginning: yes, Newton was really born on Christmas Day, a few months after the death of his father – although owing to a papal miscalculation (or if you’re feeling conspiratorial, 300 fake years being shoved into history) we would now consider his birthday to be January 4.
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