Sir Isaac Newton is universally regarded as one of the most brilliant men who ever lived.
During his 84 years on God's green earth, he did more than perhaps anyone else before or
since to further our understanding of this crazy universe we live in.
In a book titled The 100, published in 1978, Newton ranks as the second most influential
person in history, putting him one place ahead of Jesus Christ, the ACTUAL SON OF GOD.
Many of history's luminaries were only fully appreciated after their deaths,
but not Newton. He was a legend in his own lifetime, a force of nature whose
superhuman intellect illuminated the darkest recesses of human knowledge.
Knighted by Queen Anne in 1705, he later became the first scientist
buried in Westminster Abbey, a final resting place traditionally
reserved for the monarchy. It was the scientific equivalent of sainthood.
All this is of course, common knowledge. When you're one of the greatest thinkers in history,
word of your achievements tends to get around. But there's another side to the knighted Newton
that you didn't learn about in school. A shadowy Mr. Hyde to the genius Dr. Jekyl.
You see, Newton spent decades of his life conducting top-secret research that even
his closest colleagues and confidants knew nothing about. And there was good reason for that. Because
had anyone known what Newton was really up to behind closed doors, he would probably have been
locked up, perhaps even hanged. His descendants considered this clandestine research to be so
dangerous that they buried it for centuries. When it eventually resurfaced more than 200 years
after his death, it unveiled the unexpectedly dark shadows cast by one of science's brightest lights.
This is the untold story of Sir Isaac Newton, a scientist, mathematician,
genius........ and heretical alchemist.
Like the man he pipped to second spot on the list of the 100 most influential people in history,
Newton was born on Christmas Day. The birth of a child is typically
one a family’s most joyous events, but Newton's was a little different.
His father, also called Isaac, had died 3 months earlier, and Isaac junior arrived
several months ahead of schedule. He was so tiny when he gulped his first breath
of earthly air that his mother claimed he could fit inside a quart mug (hopefully
someone from America can tell me what that actually means in the comments).
If Newton's birth was bad his childhood wasn't much better. When he was just three years of age
his mother left the family home to shack up with the rector of a nearby village,
abandoning Isaac to the care of his grandparents. Perhaps unsurprisingly Newton would grow up
hating his stepfather's god-fearing guts, and his relationship with his mother suffered as a result.
Oddly enough, Newton wasn't actually such a great student as a youngster. He only started
taking his studies seriously after deciding the best way to prove his worth to his many
bullies was to show them he was smarter than they were (it's fair to say that went pretty well).
Still, had history taken a slightly different course Newton might never
have become the giga-genius he ultimately did, because in 1658 his mother pulled
him out of school and tried to force him to take over the family farm. Luckily for us,
Newton's schoolmaster managed to change her mind and the young genius ended up at Cambridge,
where he delved into the fields of science and mathematics, rather than... actual fields.
The rest, as they say, is history. By 24, Newton had established the
fundamentals of calculus, discovered the complex multi-coloured nature of light,
and started work on what would one day become the universal theory of gravity.
At an age when most of us are still figuring out how to work the washing machine, Isaac Newton had
fundamentally altered humanity's understanding of life, the universe, and everything.
Had he made just one of these breakthroughs in his career he would have gone down in history as
one of the most important scientists of the age. The fact he made all 3 - and countless
others besides - is why we consider Newton to be perhaps the most important scientist of *any* era.
And that's pretty much how he was viewed for a good 200 years after his death,
but on July the 13th 1936, the world got its first
glimpse of an altogether different side of the saintly scientist.
That was the day the brilliantly named Gerard Vernon Wallop,
known to his mates as the 9th Earl of Portsmouth,
put the contents of a large metallic chest up for auction at Sotheby's in London. The junk in
this metallic trunk consisted of thousands of pages of handwritten notes by Newton himself.
These never-before-seen manuscripts, containing a colossal 10 million words, represented the sum
total of Newton's life’s work, but barely anyome knew they existed before that day.
Newton died without a will, and this wealth of writings wandered to his relatives, who,
after scanning the contents, decided it was best for everyone if the manuscripts disappeared.
If you're wondering what convinced the 9th Earl of Portsmouth to break with 200 years of
family tradition by offering Newton's papers up for public auction, the answer is simple:
he was broke.
10 million words straight from the pen of the greatest scientist in history should have been
priceless, but oddly the auction attracted scant attention. For some reason the folks
at Sotheby's did bugger all to advertise the sale, and ultimately Newton's life work was sold
piecemeal to dozens of different collectors for the paltry sum of just 9,000 pounds.
Among the buyers, that day was legendary economist John Maynard Keynes. He'd turned up late,
having only heard about the marginally marketed auction at the last minute, and as a result,
he was only able to snag around 10% of the papers. What he discovered in those pages
was so remarkable he spent the final decade of his life trying to track down the rest.
Despite Newton's reputation as one of the greatest scientists and mathematicians in history, those
subjects accounted for less than a third of the writing he left behind. In other words, all that
invention-of-calculus-and-discovery-of-the-laws-of-gravity business was basically a side hobby he
dabbled in when he wasn't working on his *real* interests - namely religion... and alchemy.
Of the two, the former would likely have been the most controversial in Newton's
time. Because the roughly 5 million words he dedicated to the subject of religion
revealed views that the Christian church would have considered nothing short of heretical.
Newton was a closet anti-trinitarian, meaning he rejected the idea of a God separated into the
three equal parts of the Holy Trinity - according to Newton, Jesus Christ was just another man,
and worshipping him was tantamount to idolatry. In 17th-century England,
that was a very dangerous viewpoint indeed - people had been executed for far less.
Despite his radical religious ideas, Newton was a deeply spiritual man and devout Christian. He
was also a bit of an egotist, believing he'd been hand picked by God to reveal
ancient wisdom hidden in the bible. He years he fixated on finding the fabled Bible Code - a
hidden cipher that would reveal long-lost knowledge about the nature of the universe.
In a manuscript dating to 1704, Newton used clues he found in the Old Testament’s Book of
Daniel to scientifically calculate the timing of the apocalypse.
Though unable to pinpoint a precise date,
he did predict it would come sooner than 2060. I can’t decide if that’s comforting or terrifying.
Newton's religious views may have been heretical,
but his alchemical interests were very much illegal.
Practitioners of alchemy, an antiquated arm of natural philosophy, sought to transform
base metals into gold; seek a miracle cure-all concoction; or brew the elusive elixir of life,
which was basically Red Bull, but if you drank it you'd live forever.
Alchemy was a pinch of proto-chemistry, a smattering of sorcery, and a massive dollop
of delusional bullshit… but Sir Isaac Newton was absolutely bloody mad for it.
Among the papers auctioned in 1936 was a detailed description of how
to make something called sophick mercury, which in Newton’s day was believed to be
a precursor to the philosopher's stone - the key to eternal life.
Newton conducted countless experiments over the course of 30 years as a dedicated alchemist,
and while he was never successful in transmuting lead into gold, his alchemical obsession may have
had an unexpected but profound effect on his life and legacy. More on that in a moment.
Oh, and if you're still wondering exactly why alchemy was illegal in Newton's day,
allow me to explain. If someone ever figured out how to turn base
metals into gold they would have had the power to single-handedly break the entire English economy.
Nobody knew for certain if transmutation was actually possible, but in 1404 Henry IV
made some aspects of alchemy punishable by death just to be on the safe side.
While Newton's more outlandish studies were almost entirely unknown to the outside world
until the auction in 1936, even in his own time he had a reputation for being... well, a bit odd.
He was an introverted child and a reclusive adult with very few friends. At 19 he confessed all
his sins in a letter he wrote to none other than God himself. While most were laughably
innocuous - like squirting water on a Sunday (I'm definitely going to hell if that counts) - others
reveal a darker side to the scientific saint of the seventeenth century. Among his 57 sins,
Newton confessed to punching his sister, fighting, wishing various people dead,
and threatening to burn his parent's house down while they were still inside.
Newton also had a famously volatile relationship with many of his fellow
scientists. Probably his most famous dispute was with German polymath Gottfried Leibniz,
who Newton believed had plagiarised his development of calculus.
The bitter feud spanned years and turned pretty nasty, prompting the prestigious
Royal Society to intervene. In a long and detailed report published in 1713,
the Society ruled in Newton's favour. But there was a catch - Newton just so happened
to be the president of the Royal Society at the time, and he wrote the entire scathing
report himself without ever bothering to ask Leibniz for his version of events.
(Incidentally, most modern scholars now believe Newton and Leibniz developed
calculus entirely independently, so it was all a lot of fuss about nothing).
As a professor, Newton taught at Cambridge University for some 30 years, but he had
little interest in passing on his knowledge to the next generation. He made no effort to dumb things
down for the mere mortals taking his classes, and his lectures were so impenetrable that most
of his students didn’t even bother turning up. Not that Newton minded - according to legend,
he delivered his lectures regardless of whether or not anybody was there to actually hear them.
Newton‘s famously erratic behaviour only intensified with age, and in 1692
he had a full-blown nervous breakdown. For 18 months, he battled insomnia, mental confusion,
tremors, digestive issues, memory maladies, and paranoid delusions.
Modern Newton scholars have speculated that he may have suffered from one or
more conditions - bipolar disorder, depression, Asperger's Syndrome,
and schizophrenia have all been posited at one time or another.
But it may also be the case that Newton's secret research contributed
to his psychological imbalance. Because those symptoms I just mentioned - insomnia,
confusion, digestive issues - they're all signs of mercury poisoning.
Mercury was an important substance to alchemists, and Newton would have used it
in many of his experiments. Being the thorough - and slightly barmy - scientist that he was,
he even tasted it along with over 100 metals, including arsenic and lead.
To add a little extra weight to the heavy metal poisoning theory, on his death at the
grand old age of 84, Newton's hair was found to contain extremely high concentrations of mercury.
In his mid-50s, Newton was appointed Warden to the Royal Mint. The role was supposed to be symbolic,
more a sign of status than an actual job. But Newton had other ideas. To the extreme annoyance
of his new colleagues, he took his purely symbolic job incredibly seriously, bowling in like Elon
Musk at Twitter and making wholesale changes designed to reduce corruption and inefficiency.
Counterfeiting was a huge problem in England at the time, and Newton vigorously pursued
the prosecution of those suspected of the crime. Rumour has it he would even visit
London's dodgier pubs in disguise in an attempt to gather evidence on local coin-based criminals.
He was responsible for dozens of successful convictions, and many of those he brought to
justice were hung, drawn, quartered, and finally disembowelled for their crimes.
He continued to work diligently in this job-that-was-never-supposed-to-be-a-job
for almost 30 years, only retiring when the grim reaper paid him a visit in the Spring of 1727.
History remembers Newton as the ultimate scientist. A pure intellect whose remarkable
insights ushered mankind into a new era of understanding. And he certainly did exactly
that. But, like every other member of the species he did so much for, Newton was also a man. He made
his fair share of mistakes and did battle with more than a few demons. And yes, he may have been
a little bit different. But then again, perhaps you need to be if you want to change the world.
Thanks for watching.