Isaac Newton invented calculus because his University closed due to the bubonic plague!

Isaac Newton – the scientist who died a virgin – was born on January 4, 1643 or Christmas Day of the previous year based on the Julian calendar that was in use then. Newton was sent to Trinity College, University of Cambridge after proving he couldn’t make as good a farmer as his father.

In January 1665, he received his BA degree just as the bubonic plague was hitting London. The university was forced to close down later in the same year, advising its students to escape to the sparsely populated countryside. The young man went back to his family’s farm until the plague had passed.

Not being much of a farmer, what would idle Isaac Newton do? It is then that he began working on a branch of mathematics called infinitesimal calculus. By 1687, he was introducing it to his students at Cambridge, the first lot to experience the wrath of this head-scratching branch of mathematics.