Hacker News Reader

They worked other jobs, no? No one paid them specifically to invent calculus or anything of the sort.

During the years when Newton made his great discoveries, of calculus and universal gravitation, he had a scholarship from the University of Cambridge. (Note that it was not until a couple of decades later that Newton published this work.) After he got his MA he became a Fellow of Trinity College. So society was basically subsidizing him.

Newton was able to attend Cambridge at all only because his parents were prosperous yeoman farmers who owned substantial agricultural estates and held private incomes.

Nearly all schools at the time were not subsidized by society and required substantial tuition payments. Most children had to get jobs. School was rare.

Newton's parents, while not extremely wealthy, could afford to send him to expensive private schools, instead of requiring him to get a job at age 8. This was a prerequisite for entering Cambridge.

His early career was subsidized by his upper middle class parents and inherited capital, not by society at large. He became a professor at age 26, and was paid a salary in exchange for work after that.

> They worked other jobs, no?

This is an anachronism, you're projecting modern social organization to an era that worked very differently.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com