“Millions saw the apple fall, but Newton was the one who asked why.”

— Bernard Baruch

The fall of an apple may sound simple, but discovering gravity from this is a genius idea. If we are standing on the shoulders of giants today, didn’t everything start with the question of “why”?

Born to a poor farming family in Woolsthorpe, England, in 1642, Isaac Newton arrived in the world only a few months after his father had died. It was named after his father, who was a wealthy farmer. Derived from the Hebrew (Yitzhak), the name Isaac means “one who laughs” or “one who rejoices.” In the Old Testament of the Bible, Isaac is the firstborn son of Abraham.

From the age of 12 to the age of 17, he worked under William Clark, a pharmacist. Here he became interested in both chemistry and its pseudoscience, alchemy. Many of Newton’s biographers have noted that it was the l…