This is not the first time that great universities have had to shut their doors during an epidemic. And there is perhaps a lesson for all students about what can happen during a shutdown.
In 1665, Cambridge University closed as the bubonic plague swept across England.
Isaac Newton, a 22-year-old student, was forced to retreat to the family farm, Woolsthorpe Manor. Isolated there for more than a year, on his own he revolutionized the scientific world. Newton said that this shutdown freed him from the pressures of the curriculum and led to the best intellectual years of his life.
