Everyone knows the story about Sir Isaac Newton sitting under an apple
tree pondering the question of gravitation when an apple fell on his head
and inspired the train of thought that led to his law of universal
gravitation. But the particulars are usually omitted in this tale.
According to Voltaire, who first told the story, and got it from Newton’s
niece, Mrs. Conduit, the apple fell in his mother’s garden at Woolsthorpe,
where he was visiting her in 1666. Even the name of the apple if known –
it was a red cooking variety called the Flower of Kent. (If you want to
sample it, plant the same tree Newton sat under – grafted scions of the
tree have been taken over the years since 1666 and are available from some
English nurseries.) The apple that bopped Newton must have inspired a long
train of thought, for the law of universal gravitation didn’t come to
fruition for nearly 20 years. Such charming stories have become part of
the Newton legend, whether reliable or not. Perhaps the greatest figure in
the history of science, Newton could still say of himself: “I do not know
what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only a
boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding
a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean
of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”