April 15, 1726: Apple Doesn't Fall Far From Physicist

1726: Isaac Newton tells a biographer the story of how an apple falling in his garden prompted him to develop his law of universal gravitation. As recounted in Stukeley's Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton's Life: It was occasioned by the fall of an apple, as he sat in contemplative mood. See Also: Photo Gallery Exhibit Documents Newton's PullNewton may have indulged in some self-mythologizing here. Newton's breakthrough was not that things fell down, but that the force that made them fall extended upward infinitely, that the force exists between any two masses, and that the same force that makes an apple fall holds the moon and planets in their courses.