Isaac Newton was born prematurely on Christmas Day (according to the Julian calendar, which was in use in England at the time) in the small manor house of Woolsthorpe, near Grantham, Lincolnshire, England. His father, also named Isaac Newton, had died three months earlier. He was a small and frail baby, not expected to survive. His early life was marked by the absence of his father and the subsequent remarriage of his mother, Hannah Ayscough, to a wealthy clergyman, Barnabas Smith, when Newton was just three years old, and then being left in the care of his grandmother Margery Ayscough. This period of his life likely contributed to a sense of insecurity and a deep independent nature.

Newton enrolled at Trinity College, Cambridge, as a subsizar, a student who performed menial tasks to pay for his education. Initially, he followed the traditional curriculum, studying Aristotle, but he soon became captivated by the works of modern philosophers and scientists like René Descartes, Galileo Galilei, and Nicolaus Copernicus. He immersed himself in their ideas, laying the groundwork for his own revolutionary contributions.