Sharing of seeds from Newton’s famous apple tree

A falling apple struck genius Sir Isaac Newton on the head, inspiring him to discover the law of gravity, or so the story goes. Now seeds from that very tree are being shared so more more people might be inspired by a falling apple.

A scheme to get apple seeds from Newton’s own tree planted in 30 science centres is being done to celebrate the first UNESCO International Science Centres and Science Museum Day that takes place Thursday.

The 400-year-old tree – a cooking apple known as Flower of Kent – still thrives at its home in Woolsthorp Manor in Lincolnshire, the birthplace in 1642 and family home of one of most famous mathematician scientists that ever lived.

Until Newton there was no explanation why any object, in this case an apple, falls in a straight line. At that moment as the apple fell he imagined the forces at work and came up with his Universal Law of Gravitation, in turn explaining the motion of planets and stars and just about anything else.

There is good reason for believing the story. Newton described the inspirational moment to friend and fellow scientist William Stukeley, who wrote it into his 1752 biography of Newton. He does not clarify whether it took an impact from a falling apple to trigger his inspiration.

Orchard

The manor agreed to contribute seeds to 30 science centres across the UK, including the W5 centre in Belfast, and they will grow them to produce a distributed orchard of Newton’s tree.

Also included is the Royal Society in London where Newton served for a time as president, along with being the master of the royal mint and a maths professor at Cambridge.

The Royal Society holds in its archives the original fragile paper manuscript written by Stukeley.

Seeds from the tree have also flown on the orbiting International Space Station, carried there by astronaut Tim Peake in 2010.