Unfolding the Universe
Sir Isaac Newton told William Stukeley about the day when an apple fell from a tree and set him thinking about the solar system.
1726
Sir Isaac Newton told William Stukeley about the day when an apple fell from a tree and set him thinking about the solar system.
1726
Most people know the story of Newton’s apple: how the great mathematician, Sir Isaac Newton, stumbled onto the principle of gravitation when he saw an apple fall from a tree. In his Memoirs of Newton’s Life (1752) William Stukeley not only confirmed the truth of the tale from Newton’s own lips, but also gave us a glimpse of the astonishing fertility of mind that followed.
abridged and modernised
AFTER dinner, the weather being warm, we went into the garden, and drank tea under the shade of some apple trees, only he, and myself.* Amidst other discourse, he told me, he was just in the same situation, as when formerly, the notion of gravitation came into his mind. “Why should that apple always descend perpendicularly to the ground,” thought he to himself: occasioned by the fall of an apple, as he sat in a contemplative mood: “Why should it not go sideways, or upwards? but constantly to the earth’s centre?*
“Assuredly, the reason is, that the earth draws it. There must be a drawing power in matter: and the sum of the drawing power in the matter of the earth must be in the earth’s centre, not in any side of the earth.
* This was on April 15th, 1726.
* Stukeley thus confirms a story told to Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet, 1694-1778) by Newton’s niece Catherine Barton, who married Sir Isaac’s successor at the Royal Mint, John Conduitt.