31 August 2025

Where does enthusiasm about science come from?

Where does enthusiasm about science come from?

Newton celebrated his birthday on Christmas Day, but 25 years after his death calendars were changed from the Julian to the Gregorian and January 4 became the date.
A child who
...was born when the English Civil War was at its sixth month out of nine years,
...must have remembered the king’s execution (or at least related gossips),
...was seen as a future farmer by his mother,
somehow proved his interest in science and became a notorious scholar in at least five scientific fields.

In contrast to modern scientists, Isaac Newton probably never experienced a deadline-related stress and surprisingly, managed to step into more fields than a modern scientist usually can.

On purpose or not, he sacrificed his personal life in order to bring light to science when viewing research as a game: there is a list of questions, any scientific experiment is allowed, the one to answer the highest number of questions wins the game.

From the apothecary’s house

...he came to Chemistry.

At the age of 12, Isaac was admitted to the King’s School, located in Grantham, the nearest to his home big town, still about 15 km away. He was nothing special as a student at his early teenage years and would hardly stay at that school (even though it was free) if not for his mother’s childhood friend William Clarke.

William was an apothecary whose sons were going to attend the same school. The Clarke family hosted Isaac at their home for the time of the studies. It was there Isaac Newton got acquainted with chemistry from the perspective of pharmacology and learnt his first lessons in the field.