Changes

==Life==

==Life==

Newton was born on [[Christmas]] day December 25, 1642<ref> He was born a little more that a year after Galileo died. [[Italy]] and England used different calendars, however, so there is a mistake to the effect they died in the same year. Galileo died in 1641 by the English calendar.</ref> in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire; his father, also Isaac, died before his birth. The senior Isaac (1606–1642) was an illiterate farmer who left extensive lands as well as goods worth £459, including a flock of 235 sheep and a herd of 46 cattle. The annual income was about £150, and Newton drew on that income to supplement his college fellowship while at Cambridge. The Newtons were a well-to-do, upwardly mobile family of farmers, but never had a prominent member. When he was a little more than two years old, his mother Hannah (1610–1679), remarried, and his upbringing was taken over by his maternal grandmother. He began his schooling in neighboring villages, and, at ten, was sent to the grammar school at Grantham, the nearest town of any size. He boarded during terms at the house of an apothecary from whom he may have derived his lifelong interest in chemistry. The young Newton seems to have been a quiet, not particularly bookish, lad, but very ready with his hands; he made sun dials, model windmills, a water clock, a mechanical carriage, and flew kites with lanterns attached to their tails. Throughout his life he built mechanical devices and fashioned his own tools for high-precision work.

Newton was born on [[Christmas]] day December 25, 1642<ref> He was born a little more that a year after Galileo died. [[Italy]] and England used different calendars, however, so there is a mistake to the effect they died in the same year. Galileo died in 1641 by the English calendar.</ref> in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire; his father, also Isaac, died before his birth. The senior Isaac Newton (1606–1642) was a wealthy but illiterate farmer who left extensive lands as well as goods worth £459, including a flock of 235 sheep and a herd of 46 cattle. The annual income was about £150, and Newton drew on that income to supplement his college fellowship while at Cambridge. The Newtons were a well-to-do, upwardly mobile family of farmers, but never had a prominent member. When he was a little more than two years old, his mother Hannah (1610–1679), remarried, and his upbringing was taken over by his maternal grandmother. He began his schooling in neighboring villages, and, at ten, was sent to the grammar school at Grantham, the nearest town of any size. He boarded during terms at the house of an apothecary from whom he may have derived his lifelong interest in chemistry. The young Newton seems to have been a quiet, not particularly bookish, lad, but very ready with his hands; he made sun dials, model windmills, a water clock, a mechanical carriage, and flew kites with lanterns attached to their tails. Throughout his life he built mechanical devices and fashioned his own tools for high-precision work.

In 1656, Newton's mother, on the death of her second husband, returned to Woolsthorpe and took her son out of school with the idea of making him a farmer. He hated farming. His mother, after considerable persuasion by his teacher at Grantham, who had recognized his intellectual gifts, allowed him to prepare for entrance to [[Cambridge University]]. In June 1661, he was admitted to prestigious Trinity College as a lowly "sub-sizar" (a student required to do work-study). The main curriculum was the study of Aristotle, but early in 1664, as Newton's notebooks indicate, he began an intensive self-study of geometry, Copernican astronomy and optics. On his own he read Descartes, Pierre Gassendi, Galileo, Robert Boyle, Thomas Hobbes, Kenelm Digby, Joseph Glanville, and Henry More. He was a loner with only one friend, but he was stimulated by the distinguished mathematician and theologian Isaac Barrow, Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, who recognized Newton's genius and did all he could to foster it.  

In 1656, Newton's mother, on the death of her second husband, returned to Woolsthorpe and took her son out of school with the idea of making him a farmer. He hated farming. His mother, after considerable persuasion by his teacher at Grantham, who had recognized his intellectual gifts, allowed him to prepare for entrance to [[Cambridge University]]. In June 1661, he was admitted to prestigious Trinity College as a lowly "sub-sizar" (a student required to do work-study). The main curriculum was the study of Aristotle, but early in 1664, as Newton's notebooks indicate, he began an intensive self-study of geometry, Copernican astronomy and optics. On his own he read Descartes, Pierre Gassendi, Galileo, Robert Boyle, Thomas Hobbes, Kenelm Digby, Joseph Glanville, and Henry More. He was a loner with only one friend, but he was stimulated by the distinguished mathematician and theologian Isaac Barrow, Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, who recognized Newton's genius and did all he could to foster it.