Physicist and mathematician Isaac Newton was born #OTD in 1643.
Newton revolutionized our understanding of mathematics, mechanics, gravity, and optics. Later in life he served as warden of the Royal Mint, reforming currency and foiling counterfeiters.
Portrait: Barrington Bramley, after Godfrey Kneller
Newton's "Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica” was published in 1687. It spells out his three Laws of Motion, which explain the relationship between the forces acting on an object and the changes in its motion, as well as his law of universal gravitation.
You can page through Newton's own annotated copy of his Principia here, courtesy of the Cambridge University Library:
During the Covid lockdowns, a number of popular sci-comm figures claimed that Newton made incredible discoveries and advances while stuck at his mother’s country home during England’s bubonic “Great Plague” that began in 1665.
I mean, if Newton just needed some social distancing and a sweeping plague to understand gravity, surely we could take advantage of the Covid lockdowns to do something magnificent. Right?
Newton began his optics work in 1666 but it went on for years. He didn't present it to the Royal Society until 1672. He may have had insights about Earth's gravity extending to the moon in 1666, but it took decades to develop his universal law of gravitation. The work on calculus mostly took place after he became a professor at Cambridge in 1669.
Also, he was living with his mother. All his needs were being taken care of. He didn't have kids, cleaning, laundry, or cooking to worry about.
So don't buy into those stories. I get that folks needed silver linings during the lockdowns, but Newton didn’t do all that stuff in quarantine. And the things he did accomplish, were made possible by the support and invisible labor of those around him.
(Also, "lone genius with a comprehensive support network" is an outdated picture of scientific progress that doesn’t reflect how science gets done nowadays and wasn't a great parallel for what most people were going through with Covid.)
Anyway, we all know about Newton's scientific accomplishments. What is lesser known is the fact that he served first as Warden and then Master of the Royal Mint for the last 30 years of his life, from 1696 to around 1727.
He took this position very seriously. During the Great Recoinage of 1696 he estimated that as much as 20% of the reclaimed currency was counterfeit. Newton took it upon himself to deal with the problem.
He had himself made a Justice of the Peace, and would go undercover –– sometimes in disguise! –– to collect evidence. Then, after the counterfeiters had been arrested, Sir Isaac Newton would often question them himself.
This is not exactly in keeping with the image of Sir Isaac Newton that most of us probably have. Apparently he liked to get his hands dirty!
Here is a little story about Newton which may or may not be related to his interest in the responsibilities of the Royal Mint.
In 1688 the British Parliament repealed the "Act Against Multipliers."
This was a law that had been passed in 1404. It forbid alchemists from transmuting base metals into something more precious, like gold or silver. Makes sense – you don't want alchemists devaluing your currency!
The law was repealed after lobbying by Robert Boyle, whose work at the time was laying the groundwork for modern chemistry.
Newton, who was obsessed with alchemy, hypothesized that the campaign to repeal the law meant that Boyle must have found an alchemical method for producing gold!
(This was not the case. You cannot chemically transmute an element. All the gold on Earth was likely formed in supernovae or a collision between neutron stars. Boyle did not have access to either of those.)
@mcnees That’s curious. Boyle took the effort to repeal a nonsense law that would never have been used, since you can’t transmute (outside a nuclear reactor). Why waste that effort for an ineffective law. Probably more to that part of the story.
Anyway, Isaac Newton died in 1727. Here's a copy of his death mask. It was made in 1892 from the plaster originals. I think he sort of looked like Colin Firth?
Image: Newton Institute, on loan from the Whipple Museum of Science
Finally, Isaac Newton supposedly told a friend that his dog Diamond helped him uncover two theorems. Also, there’s a story about Diamond being responsible for a fire that destroyed some of Newton’s papers.
I believe the bit about the theorems, but as far as the fire is concerned, I think the dog was framed.
@mcnees Gribbon & Gribbon, "Out of the Shadow of a Giant" makes a fascinating case that Newton invented this story to try and override his rival Hooke, who'd had the fundamental conceptual realization earlier but didn't publish it. Great read, though definitely with a bit of a chip on its shoulder.
@mcnees they also point out that "if I've seen further, it's by standing on the shoulders of giants" was likely supposed to be not an acknowledgment, but a sick burn on Hooke (who was short)
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