Person    | Male  Born 4/1/1643  Died 31/3/1727

Sir Isaac Newton

Categories: Science, Seriously Famous

Born in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, on Christmas day, according to the calendar in use at the time. Died in Kensington (where he had gone in search of country air). The exact dates of birth and death vary from source to source. Buried Westminster Abbey.

He entered Trinity College, Cambridge in 1660. He propounded the laws of motion, universal gravitation, optics and the basis of differential calculus. He was Master of the Mint from 1699 - 1727, President of the Royal Society from 1703 - 26 and was knighted in 1705. Used to feature on the £1 note.

It is sometimes said that he lived in Leicester Square, but he actually lived nearby at 35 St. Martin's Street.

It is also said that Newton was practically an agelast, as Maths pages tells us: Isaac Newton's assistant at Cambridge claimed that during five years he saw Newton laugh only once. Newton had loaned a copy of Euclid {geometry} to an acquaintance, and the gentleman asked what use it was to study Euclid, "upon which Sir Isaac was very merry".

It's said that Newton loved animals and invented the cat-flap. Despite this, Newton may not have been a very nice man - he enjoyed witnessing the executions of the counterfeiters he pursued as part of his job at the Mint, and he had a major falling out with Robert Hooke, not speaking to him for the rest of his life. He fought a vicious feud with Leibniz over who invented the calculus. Newton's allegation that Leibniz had stolen his ideas was aggressive and destructive. It is now accepted that Newton wrote down the calculus first and Leibniz was the first to publish, while most schoolboys wish it had never been invented at all.

Buried in Westminster Abbey.

Comments are provided by Facebook, please ensure you are signed in here to see them

This section lists the memorials where the subject on this page is commemorated:
Sir Isaac Newton

Commemorated ati

British Library - Newton

Bronze, 12 foot high (and he's sitting down).  Via Facebook Henri Hudson has ...

Read More

City of London School 4 - Newton

{On the statue's plinth:} Newton

Read More

Isaac Newton bust

All four of the Leicester Square busts were removed in the 2010-12 redesign, ...

Read More

Show all 10

This section lists the memorials created by the subject on this page:
Sir Isaac Newton

Creations i

St Stephen's School - Boys entrance

The two S's probably indicate 'St Stephen's'.

Read More

Other Subjects

Alfred Russel Wallace

Alfred Russel Wallace

Explorer and naturalist.  Born Monmouthshire (which, if we can believe Wikipedia, between 1542 and 1974 was not definitively in either Wales or England).  Joined the family surveying business and l...

Person, Paranormal, Science, Malaysia, Singapore, South America, Wales

1 memorial
Sir Clive Sinclair

Sir Clive Sinclair

Inventor: pocket calculator, computers and . . . . the C5. Born as Clive Marles Sinclair on 30 July 1940 near Richmond-upon-Thames. He was the eldest of the three children of George William Carter...

Person, Science

1 memorial
Ambrose Godfrey

Ambrose Godfrey

Apothecary. Born in Köthen (Anhalt). Also known as Ambrose Godfrey-Hanckwitz and Gottfried Hankwitz or Hanckewitz. In 1679 he travelled to London and became an assistant to Robert Boyle. They worke...

Person, Science, Germany

1 memorial
Major-General William Roy

Major-General William Roy

Military engineer, surveyor, antiquary. Born South Lanarkshire.  Founder of the Ordnance Survey. 1749-55, one of a team that produced "The Duke of Cumberland's Map", commissioned by  George II as ...

Person, Armed Forces, Engineering, History, Science, Scotland

2 memorials
A. V. Hill

A. V. Hill

Physiologist. Born Archibald Vivian Hill in Bristol. One of the founders of the disciplines of biophysics and operations research he shared the 1922 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his el...

Person, Science

1 memorial