Newton's Studies at Trinity College During the Plague

Timeline

1. 1665Cambridge · CambridgeshireIn summer 1665, as the threat of plague in London approached, Cambridge University suspended classes; Newton left Trinity College and returned to Woolsthorpe, interrupting his regular college studies but gaining a long period for independent research.
2. 1665–1666Woolsthorpe · LincolnshireAt the manor, Newton conducted prism experiments on the dispersion of light, developed the method of fluxions (a precursor to calculus), and, in legend and documentary accounts, conceived that a falling apple and the motion of the Moon are governed by the same gravity, forming the rudiments of a theory of universal gravitation.
3. 1667Cambridge · CambridgeshireAfter the plague eased in 1667, Newton returned to college and continued organizing his plague-period notes and experimental records, laying the core intellectual foundation for his later works on optics and the Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica.