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🌸💖💕I’ve been doing a bit of research for my work which I thought I’d share because it has given me a lot of perspective in these times. Isaac Newton worked from home during the Great Plague. He was in his early 20s and a student at Trinity College, Cambridge. One of the last outbreaks of the 400 year long Black Death hit London in 1665 and a quarter of the population would die in a year. Cambridge sent its students home in the hope that social isolation would prevent the spread of illness. Newton returned to his family home, Woolsthorpe Manor, which may not have been the happiest place for him because as a teenager he threatened to burn his mother and stepfather and the house over them. During his year-plus of isolation he wrote papers that became early calculus and propounded the theories of gravity, optics and motion. He sat in the family orchard and had the famous thought about gravity. The story is not that the apple fell on Newton’s head and he thought why did that apple fall down rather than up? What he thought was that the force that made the apple fall from the tree was probably not limited to a certain distance from earth, “why not as high as the moon?”. This thought eventually turned into the universal law of gravitation which became known as the "first great unification", as it marked the unification of the previously described phenomena of gravity on earth with known astronomical behaviours. Amazing. Also, around the same time, Newton stuck a bodkin in his eye to test a theory of optics... My brother Matt suggested I post this as "a break from the fear and negativity". So, wherever you are, I hope you and yours are safe and well and I also hope you find your own version of the Woolsthorpe Apple tree to sit under and ponder the nature of the universe. No need to repeat the bodkin experiment. Also, couldn't help noticing, Isaac Newton and Brian May! Amazing.I would like to express my thanks, appreciation and gratitude to all the nurses, doctors and other health care professionals who are at the front line of Covid-19. I have never taken the work you do for granted. 🐈❤️❤️🐈 👑It’s a piece of cake #writing
