Isaac was born prematurely on Christmas day. Tiny and weak he wasnt expected to survive.

He was a miniscule but unimaginably precious Christmas gift from God whom the midwives who had helped birth him thought God would soon reclaim. Little Isaac, however, was born with a fighting spirit and struggled for life. Surprising the midwives he managed to survive infancy. Unfortunately, Little Isaac would continue to need the fighting that had helped him survive infancy for the entirety of his childhood. Isaac was born fatherless, his father had passed away three months before his birth, and as a toddler he was left without a mother. At the age of three his mother remarried and abandoned little Isaac to the care of his grandmother so she could go live with her wealthy new husband. His mothers departure affected little Isaac greatly, leaving him insecure, withdrawn, oversensitive and angry, traits that would be his for the rest of his life. At the age of twelve Isaacs mother returned to his life. Her wealthy, but elderly, husband had passed away leaving his estate to her. She pulled Isaac out of school intent on making Isaac a farmer on her newly acquired estate. Isaac made a poor farmer, however, and his mother soon returned him to school. Despite being an incredibly bright child who fascinated with gadgets and making small inventions of his own, Isaac did not excel at school, where he was often described as idle and inattentive. This turned around dramatically when a schoolyard bully kicked him. Isaac challenged the bully to a fight and won.

Winning the fight, however, wasnt enough. The fighting spirit that had helped Isaac to survive as a baby, and had now helped him to overcome the bully, wasnt satisfied. Isaac decided that he would get revenge on the bully, by not only beating him physically, but also by defeating him academically. On that day nearly three and a half centuries ago, Isaac Newton set himself on a course that would lead him to becoming part of an intellectual revolution that would shape the world through math, science, and physics.

At seventeen Isaac was enrolled at Cambridge University as a sizar, a program similar to work-study. Through this program Isaac worked his way through college waiting tables and taking care of other students rooms. After completing his degree he was awarded four years of financial support for future education, but the university was closed shortly thereafter as The Great Plague that had been maculating the rest of Europe had arrived at Cambridge. Isaac returned home and pursued studies privately. It is during this period that Isaac formulated and made many of his greatest ideas and discoveries that would become foundational components of math and science. It is during this period that he discovered that white light is a composite of the colors of visible light, it is during this period that he developed his version of calculus, and it is during this period that Isaac saw the apple fall and formulated his theory of gravity.

When the plague subsided a year and a half later, Isaac returned to Cambridge where he quickly rose among the ranks of scholars becoming a professor of mathematics and a member of the Royal Society, a group of prominent scholars and scientists. Sadly, Isaac was tremendously unpopular as a professor. His lectures were said to be attended by so few students, and understood by even less, that at times he would lecture to the walls for lack of listeners. As an adult, the insecurity that Isaac had developed as a child was readily apparent. He was easily lifted up by praise from his fellows, and would be furious when any criticism was leveled at his work, insisting upon the value of his work to all of science, and when asked about his heritage, Isaac would trace his lineage to nobility, which was a total fabrication. As an adult Isaac also continued to earn a reputation for distractedness, when caught up with a problem he would sometimes stay in bed all day while

he worked out the problem in his mind, or if he was entertaining guests he would leave them unattended while he went to another room to think. Over the years Isaacs influence and power grew, not only at Cambridge and the Royal Society, but over all of Great Britian as well. With him eventually becoming the president of the Royal Society and the Warden of the Mint, as well as being knighted by Queen Anne. As Isaacs stature increased, and his ego inflated, he made more than one enemy in the academic world. Unfortunately for his rivals, Isaac had no qualms about using his power and influence to marginalize those who opposed him. Indeed his tenure as the president of the Royal Society was viewed by most as a reign of tyranny. Over the course of his life Isaac had two nervous breakdowns. When the first breakdown occurred he withdrew from the world for six years, returning to his studies of gravitation and planetary motion. Isaac emerged from isolation with most of the work completed that would eventually become the Principia Mathematica, a book that became the foundation of physics and much of science, and brought great fame to Isaac. Despite the fame and glory Isaac remained humble about his many discoveries and achievements about which he had this to say. I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

During Isaacs second breakdown he alienated many of his friends with paranoid accusations before withdrawing from the world yet again, albeit for only a year. When Isaac reemerged from this latest period of isolation, he seemed unaffected. He apologized to his friends and resumed work. Something had changed, however. His mental capabilities were intact, but he no longer displayed interest in scientific problems. Instead he was obsessed with alchemy and biblical prophecy. While he had

always been fascinated by these topics and had studied them for years, they now consumed all of his time. Indeed during Isaacs last years he compiled more writings on the

subject of biblical prophecy than all of his other works combined. Isaac never married and had only one romantic involvement when he was a young man. Perhaps, Isaac never found time for love or a wife, as he was already married to his intellectual pursuits. Sir Isaac Newton was an extremely complex man, a man who was full of pride, but deeply insecure; a man known for his arrogance, but also his humility, a man known for his tenacity, but also his delicate emotional state, a man of profound faith, faith in both science and God. Above all this, Sir Isaac Newton was a man of ideas, ideas that have shaped our world.