Newall took the Mathematics and Natural Sciences Tripos from Trinity College, Cambridge, and was elected Fellow in 1909.

His father was an astronomer, and the Newall Telescope, a 25-inch refractor, built at Gateshead, was in its time the largest in existence.

Newall (junior) thereupon paid the removal expenses and then served as observer, and, from 1909 to 1928, as first holder of the chair of astrophysics, without a stipend.

Though elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in June 1902[2] for work on the spectrum of Capella, Newall was more a facilitator than a creative scientist.

He married twice, first to Margaret (a pianist) the granddaughter of Thomas Arnold, the famed headmaster of Rugby School, and second, Dame Bertha Surtees Phillpotts, Scandinavian Scholar, formerly Mistress of Girton College, and the only woman member of the Royal Commission on Cambridge (1923-7), who is buried in Tunbridge Wells.