[Lee Stewart]

An apple never fell on Isaac Newton's head

The story that the famous mathematician had an epiphany about gravity after being bonked on the head by a piece of fruit is most likely an embellishment of what really happened. The first time the apple story appeared was in a biography of Newton written by his friend William Stukeley in 1792. The account says, "the notion of gravitation came into his mind…. occasion’d by the fall of an apple, as he sat in a contemplative mood." Historians believe that he may well have seen an apple fall and begun pondering why it did so; but nowhere in any records of Newton's life does it say it hit him on the head.