Please note: all quotes in this snapshot biography are in their original early modern English form. Modernized versions are provided at the end for clarity.
When Isaac Newton was born prematurely on a cold Christmas day in 1642 in the quiet hamlet of Lincolnshire, England, he came into the world tiny and frail, with a mother likely still grieving the death of Isaac's father just three months prior and a country amidst civil war. Given all that, it wasn't clear Isaac would even survive.
The family's dire situation was later recorded by a man who heard the story directly from Isaac himself. He wrote,
"Sr I.N told me that he had been told that when he was born he was so little they could put him into a quart pot & so weakly that he was forced to have a bolster all round his neck to keep it on his shoulders & so little likely to live that when two women were sent to Lady Pakenham at North Witham for something for him they sate down on a stile by the way & said there was no occasion for making haste for they were sure the child wd be dead before they could get back."
Isaac did survive. But his upbringing continued to be challenging. When Isaac was three years old, his mother remarried and left her son in the care of his maternal grandmother as she moved to live with her new husband. This separation from his mother had a profound psychological impact on the young boy, leaving him with emotional traumas. Some argue that the neurotic and difficult personality Isaac would become partly known for, was rooted in these early years.
Despite the emotional challenges of his childhood, Isaac demonstrated early intellectual promise. He attended the local village school before being sent to the King's School in Grantham at the age of twelve. There, he boarded with the family of an apothecary, and this arrangement exposed him to a more stimulating intellectual environment. Here, Isaac began to show an interest in mechanical devices and inventions, often spending time alone constructing models of windmills and other machinery. He also developed a fascination with drawing and sketching, a skill that would allow him to visualize complex ideas in later life. One of the girls in the house who was a few years older than Isaac later wrote some observations of him during this time, noting,