Newton Born: The Mind That Unified Physics Arrives on Christmas Day
Isaac Newton was born on Christmas Day, 1642, by the old Julian calendar — January 4, 1643, by the Gregorian calendar the rest of Europe used, which is why different sources give different dates. He was premature, orphaned before birth when his father died, then effectively abandoned when his mother remarried and left him with his grandmother. He was reportedly so small at birth his mother said he'd fit inside a quart mug. He spent his adult life running the Royal Mint, prosecuting counterfeiters with the same methodical intensity he'd applied to physics, and died in 1727 having never married, never traveled far from his work, and having left behind more transformed fields of human knowledge — mathematics, optics, mechanics, gravitation — than any single person in recorded history.
December 25, 1642
384 years ago
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