Reading about Isaac Barrow is a trip.
Isaac went to school first at Charterhouse (where he was so turbulent and pugnacious that his father was heard to pray that if it pleased God to take any of his children he could best spare Isaac), and subsequently to Felsted School, where he settled and learned under the brilliant puritan Headmaster Martin Holbeach who ten years previously had educated John Wallis.
And (!!!)
He spent the next four years travelling across France, Italy, Smyrna and Constantinople, and after many adventures returned to England in 1659. He was known for his courageousness. Particularly noted is the occasion of his having saved the ship he was upon, by the merits of his own prowess, from capture by pirates.
The links in the first block quote also start building out the world of thinker-mathemetecian-(and at that time always) theologians. The birth of our world of numbers, data, and models grew out the religious world. No big meaning to attach to that at the moment, just a fact.
Also, Barrow was the first person to be the now-famed Lucias Chair at Cambridge, but gave it up six years later so Newton could hold it. Imagine someone giving up an academic post so someone else, even someone more brilliant, could take it. A very different world indeed!
