📍Water Lane, Woolsthorpe by Colsterworth, Grantham, Lincolnshire NG33 5PD, United Kingdom
1642 – 1667“I was born at Woolsthorpe Manor in Lincolnshire on Christmas Day 1642, in the stone farmhouse that had been in my family for generations, and I returned to it in 1665 when Cambridge was closed by plague and spent eighteen months there that were the most scientifically productive period of my life. It was at Woolsthorpe, in the orchard and in the farmhouse rooms, that I developed the calculus, worked out the theory of universal gravitation, and conducted the prism experiments that revealed the nature of white light. The apple tree in the orchard — the one associated with the moment of insight about gravity — was real, though the story is simplified. What is true is that Woolsthorpe's enforced isolation gave me uninterrupted time to think, and that time produced the foundations of modern science. I was twenty-three years old.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today
Sources: Westfall, R. Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton (1980), Cambridge University Press; Gleick, J. Isaac Newton (2003), Pantheon Books; Newton, I. The Correspondence of Isaac Newton (1959-1977), Cambridge University Press