everal generations, they had been painfully slowly climbing the social ladder. They had moved from serfdom - workers 'tied' to the land and bought and sold with it by the local lord - to yeomen, Brautkleider Guünstigone step down from the middle classes that could afford to educate their children to become priests or similar.

In 1642, Isaac Newton married his sweetheart, Hannah Ayscough. Hannah would have been regarded as a suitable match by both families - not as wealthy as Newton, she came from faded gentry and made up for her lack of ready cash with the cachet of a 'well bred' name. Hochzeitskleider 2013  It seems that this wedding was arranged in some haste, for Isaac was seriously ill. He died just a few months later, leaving his wife a widow (probably in her mid-to-late twenties) but with a comfortable inheritance of around 100 acres and £500. And that is all that history knows of Isaac Newton.

All, that is, but for one thing. For Hannah Newton was pregnant. When she gave birth, seven months after her wedding, she would name her son after his late father - Isaac Newton Junior.

The Sickly ChildRecords of Newton's birth and early years are scarce. Often, we have to rely on the incomplete, contradictory or second-hand anecdotes to piece together what happened. A prime example is Newton's date of birth. Coming just seven months after his parents' wedding, we - and Newton's contemporaries - might draw some rather embarrassing conclusions. Newton himself claimed to have been highly premature - so small he would fit in a quart pot, and not expected to live beyond a few hours. But then Hochzeitsgastkleideragain, Newton would later claim that his parents married in 1639, three years before his birth and two and a half years before their wedding certificate is dated, so perhaps his testimony here is suspect. What is more certain is that he was born early on Christmas Day1.

The Feckless YouthThere was little in Newton's early life to indicate the genius to come. In many things, he was an abject failure, notably the farming career his mother had mapped out for him. In oth