A Short Summary of the Essay, "Sir Isaac Newton" by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Sir Isaac Newton by Nathaniel Hawthorne

About the Author:

Nathaniel Hawthorne was a well-known American novelist, and short story writer. Guilt was the important theme of his works. He is best known for The Scarlet Letter (1850) and The House of the Seven Gables (1851).

Summary of the Essay:

The present text was published in Hawthorne’s True Stories from History and Biography (1851). The essay is a short biography which can be read as a short story about life of Sir Isaac Newton. The story begins with the childhood and shows the brilliant mind of young Newton as he was interested in the workings of mechanics and mathematics. He shows his interests by his small inventions and replicas of windmills. The story later continues with his research about the nature of light. The short story brilliantly captures the nature of Newton’s personality.

Newton was born in a small village of Woolsthorpe, in England in 1642. After the death of Newton’s father, his mother married to a clergyman. Newton was left with his grandmother. His grandmother was a kind woman. She sent Newton to school. Newton was a very bright scholar and was interested in mechanical occupations. He had a set of tools and saws of various sizes, all manufactured by himself. With the aid of these, he would make many curious articles. His neighbours always think that he would become a carpenter or architect. He was also interested in repairing clocks. He has prepared water clock and sun dial. The sun-dial is still kept at his residence in Woolsthorpe.

Isaac had capacity of learning things by simplest means. He would jump against the wind and calculate the speed of the wind. There was a windmill near his grandmother’s house and Newton would often go there and watch with curiosity how the minute parts were made and how the machinery work. Very soon, he prepared a miniature windmill which performs the same function as the large windmill. People always wonder at his inventions.

As he grew up, he got interested in the working of this universe. He would be absorbed in thought or engaged in some book of mathematics or natural philosophy. At night, he would look at the stars with curiosity and would wonder whether they were worlds like our own.

When Isaac was fourteen years old, his mother came to live with him and wished her son to leave school to assist her in managing the farm. Newton tried his best in managing the farm but he was more interested in going college and acquiring knowledge; so, his mother again sent him to school and thereafter to the University of Cambridge.

Newton was the first to find out the nature of light. He was also the first who came with the theory of gravitational force which keeps binding heavenly bodies together. Thus, the boy had found out the mechanism of a windmill; the man explained the mechanism of the universe.

Newton was a great human being. Accidentally, all of the research Newton made was destroyed in fire which was caused by the little dog, Diamond but Newton didn’t become angry with the dog. He was always very humble and would say that he knows very little as compared to the existing knowledge. He was made a Member of Parliament and received the honour of knighthood. He was died at the age of 85.