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

Daniel Solander

Daniel Solander

Swedish botanist. Came to London in June 1760 to promote Carl Linnaeus’ taxonomy and used it to catalogue the natural history collections at the British Museum. Travelled with Joseph Banks on Capta...

Person, Gardens / Agriculture, Science, Sweden

1 memorial
Hipparchus

Hipparchus

Astronomer, geographer, and mathematician.  190 BC – c. 120 BC.   Founder of trigonometry.   Possibly invented the armillary sphere, which we've discovered is occasionally used as a memorial, e.g. ...

Person, Science, Greece, Turkey

1 memorial
John Newlands

John Newlands

Chemist. Born John Alexander Reina at 19 West Square, Southwark. The first person to devise a periodic table of chemical elements arranged in order of their relative atomic masses. He arranged all ...

Person, Science

1 memorial
Will Hay

Will Hay

Comedian and actor. Born William Thomson Hay at 23 Durham Street, Stockton-on-Tees. His career started in music-halls and concert-parties. He went on to work with Fred Karno, developing his schoolm...

Person, Cinema, Science, Theatre, Australia, New Zealand, USA

1 memorial
Joseph Addison

Joseph Addison

Politician and writer. Born Milston, Wiltshire.

Person, Politics & Administration, Science

1 memorial