When the black plague closed Cambridge University, where he was a student, for two years starting in 1665, he spent the long months locked up at home studying complex mathematics, physics and optics. Isaac Newton was born in 1642, the year of Galileo's death, and from a young age showed interest in formal education - not a given in that era - rather than farming. There is probably only a bit of truth to the apple legend, historians say, but Newton was already in the midst of some very important discoveries before that alleged fruit incident at Cambridge University.
Upon getting bumped on the head by a falling apple, Newton airily dreams up the laws of gravity and the rest, as they say, is history. The common image of Isaac Newton is that of a white-haired scientist crouched at the base of a tree.
