![]() ![]() This programme of study was predominant and unrelenting, being occasionally interrupted by his work in alchemy, mathematics and natural philosophy. Īt some point early in his career at Trinity College, Newton undertook an extraordinary programme of creative theological research, whose expansiveness, originality and radicalism was matched by only a handful of contemporaries. In 1669 Barrow would pave the way for Newton to follow him as Lucasian professor, on the grounds that he himself had a more serious calling as a divine. At the same time, Newton came to know Isaac Barrow, the first Lucasian Professor and later master of the college. Although the barest facts of their relationship are known, Newton was close to Babington in his early years at the college and the latter almost certainly acted as a patron during this period. In 1661, her best friend’s brother, Humphrey Babington, recently reinstituted as a fellow at Trinity, was made rector of Boothby Pagnell, which was just over six miles away. His mother spent the vast majority of her time at Smith’s rectory between 16, producing the three half-siblings who would be Newton’s closest relatives after she died in 1679. William Aiscough, his maternal uncle and a Trinity College graduate, was rector of Burton Coggles, a village 5 miles east of Newton’s home, Woolsthorpe Manor. His own father died a few months before he was born, and when he was three his mother married Barnabas Smith, the ageing rector of the neighbouring village of North Witham. Nevertheless, although he had close contact with puritan groups, the senior and most influential male figures in his life were ordained members of the Church of England. His local church of Colsterworth had a puritan minister intruded by the parliamentarian authorities in the late 1640s, and in the second half of the 1650s he lodged with William Clarke, one of the most powerful parliamentarian figures in Grantham. Thus some modern writers have claimed that he was gay or bisexual, but the truth will probably never be known.Isaac Newton (1642–1727) was born soon after the English civil wars had begun, and in the first two decades of his life he was exposed to deeply conflicting religious traditions. ![]() He did have very close relationships with male friends, although there is no evidence that these were sexual. Newton never married, and is sometimes claimed to have died a virgin. In mathematics, he invented calculus in parallel with Leibniz. In optics, he was the first to show that white light is made up of a mixture of the colours of the spectrum. ![]() The Newtonian explanation of the world was unchallenged until Einstein developed the theory of relativity in the early 20th century, and is still an adequate approximation to the real world for most everyday purposes. Newton's laws of motion and theory of universal gravitation revolutionised the understanding of the physical world, and explained how the same force that makes an apple fall from a tree accounts for the motions of the planets. This would normally have required him to be ordained a priest of the Church of England, but Newton obtained a special permission from King Charles II to be appointed without being ordained, as his religious views were somewhat orthodox. In 1669 he was appointed Lucasian Professor of Mathematics. He went to school at Grantham, and studied at Trinity College, Cambridge from 1661. Newton was born at Woolsthorpe Manor in Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth, a hamlet in Lincolnshire. ![]() Sir Isaac Newton by Kneller Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1727) was an English scientist and mathematician, sometimes considered the greatest scientist who ever lived. ![]()
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