1642: Birth of Isaac Newton in Woolsthorpe, England

1646: Hannah Newton remarries and moves away, leaving her son to be raised by an uncle.

1653: Death of Hannah's second husband; she returns to live with Isaac, bringing three children with her from her second marriage.

1654: Newton enrolls in the Grantham Grammar School

1661: Newton enrolls in Trinity College, Cambridge.

1665: Newton receives his bachelor of arts from Trinity College

1666: Newton conducts prism experiments, discovers spectrum of light; works out his system of "fluxions," precursor of modern calculus; begins to consider the idea of gravity.

1669: Newton appointed Lucasian Chair of Mathematics at Trinity, a position he will hold for the next thirty-four years.

1672: Newton elected to the Royal Society

1672: Newton's paper on optics and his prism experiments sent to the Society. Rivalry with Hooke begins.

1670-: Newton works on the mathematics of gravitation in his home in Cambridge.

1679: Death of Hannah Newton

1684: Halley goes to visit Newton in Cambridge, where they discuss the principle inverse squares and its relationship with planetary orbits.

1684: Newton completes his calculations on gravity and shares them with Halley, who urges him to publish.

1685: Newton sends a brief treatise, Propositiones de Motu, to the Royal Society, outlining his findings.

1686: Newton presents the first book of the Principia to the Royal Society.

1687: Publication of the complete Principia

1689: Newton elected as Cambridge's representative to Parliament.

1693: Newton's "Black Year." He is plagued by depression and insomnia, and apparently suffers a nervous breakdown in September.

1695: Newton appointed warden of the Mint, to oversee the implementation of a new currency. He leaves Cambridge and moves to London.

1699: Newton named master of the Mint.

1703: Newton elected President of the Royal Society.

1704: Publication of Opticks; beginning of feud with Leibniz.

1705: Newton knighted by Queen Anne.

1712: Royal Society commission, under Newton's direction, investigates the competing claims of Leibniz and Newton to having developed calculus, and decides in favor of Newton.

1713: Second edition of the Principia published.

1726: Third edition of the Principia published; all reference to Leibniz has been removed. (after Leibniz death in 1714)

1727: Death of Sir Isaac Newton, in London. 


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