Setting aside the controversy this year with wishing Sir
Isaac Newton a Happy Birthday on Christmas, there were two thoughts in
different directions: the calendar and do most people even know for what Sir
Newton is noted.
Happy Birthday on December 25th looked like
January 4th for Sir Isaac in his life time which started in 1642.
With a healthy long life, the astronomer lived to be 84 years old, expiring
March 20 1726. Interesting thing about the calendar between 1642 and 1726, it
didn’t change.
While the calendars around the world were changing with the
Catholic church adopting the Gregorian calendar in 1582, England, Wales and the
Colonies were not participating until the New Style Act in 1750. American
historians will point out to eager students that the change in calendar is the
reason for President’s Day being sometime in February rather than on Washington’s
Birthday because we changed the date during his life time. Imagine thinking you
know your date of birth only to find out you’ve been wrong by about a week:
Poor George.
More importantly, Sir Isaac Newton formulated the laws of
motion and universal gravitation. Because of his work, we understand planetary
motion, trajectories of comets and other fun astronomical facts. Newton removed
the last doubts about the center of our system being the Sun. Believe it or
not, there were nay-sayers to that fact for a several centuries.
Sir Newton was a professor of mathematics, biblical
chronology and alchemy, a combination not likely in our day but quite the
scholar in his time.
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