Location: Front garden of Parkes Observatory, 585 Telescope Road, Parkes, NSW, 2870
Country: Wiradjuri
LGA: Parkes Shire
Region: Central Western NSW
Website:
Map: Below
Isaac Newton (1643- 1727) was an English mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian and recreational apple-grower. His major contributions to Science include his Law of Universal Gravitation and Laws of Motion, as outlined in his 1687 publication, Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy), and his earlier analysis of the nature of light presented in his Opticks: or, A Treatise of the Reflexions, Refractions, Inflexions and Colours of Light, first published in 1704. Newton is also credited with creating the first known reflecting telescope (see History of the telescope).
According to a probably apocryphal story, Newton conceived his Law of Universal Gravity after seeing an apple fall from one of the trees in his orchard at Woolsthorpe Manor, in Lincolnshire, England. A scion of that apple tree is now growing in the front garden of the Parkes Observatory, as a living memorial to Sir Isaac and his foundational contributions to Europe’s ‘Scientific Revolution‘.
Isaac Newton: Who He Was, Why Apples Are Falling [National Geographic Education]
Legend has it that Isaac Newton formulated gravitational theory in 1665 or 1666 after watching an apple fall and asking why the apple fell straight down, rather than sideways or even upward.
“He showed that the force that makes the apple fall and that holds us on the ground is the same as the force that keeps the moon and planets in their orbits,” said Martin Rees, a former president of Britain’s Royal Society, the United Kingdom’s national academy of science, which was once headed by Newton himself.
“His theory of gravity wouldn’t have got us global positioning satellites,” said Jeremy Gray, a mathematical historian at the Milton Keynes, U.K.-based Open University. “But it was enough to develop space travel.” More >>
Captions
1. Portrait of Isaac Newton in his forties by Godfrey Kneller, 1689. This portrait hung in Newton’s home until he died in 1727. Wikipedia Commons.
2. Title page of the first edition of Isaac Newton’s Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy) published in Latin in 1687. Wikipedia Commons.
Newton’s apple tree at Parkes Observatory: from the text beside the tree
The apple trees growing in our gardens are direct descendants (scion) of an apple tree that stood in Sir Isaac Newton’s garden in Lincolnshire, England, and which is reputed to be the tree from which fell the apple that helped Newton to formulate his theory of gravitation.
Around 1814 Newton’s original tree was thought to be dying so some of the wood was taken, propagated and distributed around the world.
History of Parkes Newton’s apple trees
– 1960s Towards the end of the 60’s the Vice Chancellor of Monash University, Melbourne, arranged for a cutting to be planted in the university’s garden
– 1977 Saw a cutting, taken from the tree at Monash, planted outside the CSIRO laboratory in Highett, Melbourne
– 1990 Pat Naughtin, communications manager at CSIRO Woold Technology, took cuttings from the Highett tree and arranged for its progeny to be planted at the CSIRO laboratories in Geelong, the Parkes radio telescope in central west NSW and the Science Works museum in Melbourne
– 1991 Ron Ekers, then Director of ATNF, planted the tree In the visitor centre gardens at Parkes radio telescope at the 30th anniversary of the telescope celebrations
– 2009 Department of Primary Industries Orange collected wood from the Parkes apple tree, which was in poor health. The collected wood was grafted to new apple trees to keep the lineage alive
– 2010 Six of the grafted trees were planted on the site, four in the front garden of the telescope’s visitor centre and two in the side garden of the Astronomer Quarters
THIS GARDEN
Dedicated to budding scientists everywhere.
UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES
This photo of Newton’s apple tree at the Parkes Observatory was taken in the Autumn of 2025, when apple trees should be losing their leaves and preparing for Winter.
So why was Newton’s apple tree flowering in autumn?
To gardeners, horticulturalists, farmers and scientists such unseasonal behaviour is yet more evidence of Climate Change, one of the many unintended consequences of the ‘Scientific Revolution‘.
And what about that other theory of gravitation, the one conceived by Albert Einstein, aka his General Theory of Relativity?
More from CSIRO: News release 14 December 2021:
Einstein’s theory passes rigorous 16-year tests
An international team has used telescopes around the world, including CSIRO’s Parkes radio telescope – Murriyang, to complete the most challenging tests yet of Einstein’s general theory of relativity.
The team, led by Professor Michael Kramer from the Max-Planck-Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany, showed that Einstein’s theory published in 1915 still holds true.
Dr Dick Manchester, a Fellow at Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO, and a member of the research team, explained how this result provides us with a more precise understanding of our Universe.
“The theory of general relativity describes how gravity works at large scales in the Universe, but it breaks down at the atomic scale where quantum mechanics reigns supreme,” Dr Manchester said.
“We needed to find ways of testing Einstein’s theory at an intermediate scale to see if it still holds true. Fortunately, just the right cosmic laboratory, known as the ‘double pulsar’, was found using the Parkes telescope in 2003.
“Our observations of the double pulsar over the past 16 years proved to be amazingly consistent with Einstein’s general theory of relativity, within 99.99 per cent to be precise,” he said.
History of gravitational theory >>
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Post created 24 April 2025. Last updated 23 September 2025.