Sir Isaac Newton (1642 -1727)
( Taken from ‘Maths for the 80’s” by Priddle & Davies, pp 406 - 407)
Nature and Nature’s Laws lay hid in Night;
God said, Let Newton be! And all was light!
POPE, Epitaph for Sir Isaac Newton
Sir Isaac Newton is conservatively ranked with Archimedes and Gauss as one of the three greatest mathematicians of all time - and many believe he is the greatest of the three.
Born in Woolsthorpe, England on Christmas Day, 1642, Newton did not show any great potential in his early schooling, being among the lowest in his class. At 14 he left school to help out on his mother’s farm, but there he spent much of his time reading books on mathematics and making models, one being a mouse-operated mill for grinding wheat into flour.