The Biography Of Isaac Newton

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Born December 25, 1642 [January 4, 1643, New Style], Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England—died March 20 [March 31], 1727, London, England. English physicist and mathematician, who was the culminating, figure of the scientific revolution of the 17th century. With discoveries in optics, motion,and mathematics he developed the principles of modern physics. He was the original discoverer of the infinitesimal calculus. Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica ( Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy), 1687, was one of the most important single works in the history of modern science.

Early Life
On December 25, 1642, Isaac Newton was born in the hamlet of Woolsthorpe, England, the only son of a prosperous local farmer, also named Isaac Newton. Young Isaac never knew his father, who died three months before he was born. A premature baby born tiny and weak, Isaac was not expected to survive. When he was three, his mother, Hannah Ayscough Newton, remarried a well-do-do minister, Barnabas Smith, and went to live with him, leaving young Isaac with his maternal grandmother. The experience left an indelible imprint on Isaac which manifested itself later in life as an acute sense of insecurity. He anxiously obsessed over his published work and defended its merits with irrational behavior.

At age twelve, Isaac Newton was reunited with his mother after her second husband died. She brought along her three small children from her second marriage. Isaac had been enrolled at the King's School, Grantham, England, where he lodged with a local apothecary and was introduced to the fascinating world of chemistry. His mother pulled him out of school, for her plan was to make him a farmer and have him tend the farm. Isaac failed miserably for he found farming monotonous. He soon was returned to King's School to finish his basic education. Perhaps sensing his innate intellectual abilities, his uncle, a graduate of Trinity College at Cambridge persuaded Isaac's mother to have him enter the university. Isaac enrolled in 1661 in a program similar to a work study where he waited on tables and took care of wealthier students' rooms.

When Isaac Newton arrived at Cambridge, the scientific revolution was already in full force. The heliocentric view of the universe—theorized by astronomers Nicholas Copernicus and Johannes Kepler and later refined by Galileo Galilea—was well known in most European academic circles. Philosopher Rene Descartes had begun to formulate a new conception of nature as an intricate, impersonal, and inert machine. Yet, as with most universities in Europe, Cambridge was steeped in Aristotelian philosophy and view of nature resting on a geocentric view of the universe and dealing with nature in qualitative rather than quantitative terms.

During his first three years at Cambridge, Isaac Newton was being taught the standard curriculum but fascinated with the more advanced science. All his spare time was spent reading from the modern philosophers. The result was a less-than-stellar performance, but one that is understandable given his dual course of study. It was during this time that Newton kept a second set of notes entitled "Quaestiones Queedam Philosphicea" ("Certain Philosophical Questions"), begun sometime in 1664. The "Queaestiones" reveal that Newton had discovered the new conception of nature that provided the framework for the scientific revolution.

Though Isaac Newton graduated with no honors or distinctions,his efforts won him the title of scholar and four years of financial support for future education. Unfortunately, in 1665, the Great Plague that was ravaging Europe had come to Cambridge and the university closed. Newton returned home to pursue his private study. It was during this 18-month hiatus that he conceived the method of infinitesimal calculus, set foundations for his theory of light and color, and gained significant insight into the laws of planetary motion, insights that eventually led to the publication of his Principia in 1687. Legend has it that at this time Newton experienced his famous inspiration of gravity with the falling apple.

With the threat of plague subsided in 1667, Isaac Newton returned to Cambridge and was elected a minor fellow at Trinity College, still not considered a standout scholar. However, in the ensuing years, his fortune improved. Newton received his Master of Arts degree in 1669, before he was twenty-seven. During this time, he came across Nicholas Mercator's published book on methods for dealing with infinite series. Newton quickly wrote a treatise, De Analysi, expounding his own wider ranging results. He shared this with his friend and mentor Isaac Barrow but didn’t put his name as author. In June, 1669, Barrow shared the unaccredited manuscript with British mathematician John Collins. In August, 1669, Barrow indentified its author to Collins as "Mr. Newton… a very young… but of an extraordinary genius and proficiency in these things." Newton's work was brought to the attention of the mathematics community for the first time. Shortly afterwards, Barrow resigned his Lucasian Professorship at Cambridge and Newton assumed the Chair.

Professional Life
As professor, Isaac Newton was exempted from tutoring but required to deliver an annual course of lectures. He chose to deliver his work on optics as his initial topic. Part of his study in optics was aided with the use of a reflecting telescope that Newton designed and constructed in 1668, his first major public scientific achievement. This invention helped prove his theory of light and color. In 1671, the Royal Society asked for a demonstration of his reflecting telescope and their interest encouraged him to publish his notes On Colour in 1672, which he later revised to Book One of Opticks.

However, not everyone at the Royal Academy was enthusiastic about Isaac Newton's discoveries in optics. Among some of the dissenters was Robert Hooke, one of the original
members of the Royal Academy and a scientist who was accomplished in a number of areas including mechanics and optics. In his paper, Newton theorized that white light was a composite of all the colors of the spectrum and that light was composed of particles. Hooke believed that light was composed of waves. Hooke quickly condemned Newton’s paper in condescending terms and attacked his methodology and conclusions. Hooke was not the only one to question Newton's work on optics. The great Danish scientist,Huygens and a number of French Jesuits also raised objections. But because of Hooke’s association with the Royal Society and his own work in optics, his criticism stung Newton the worst. He was unable to handle the critique and went into a rage, a reaction to criticism that was to continue throughout his life. He denied

Hooke's charge that the theories had any shortcomings and argued the importance of his discoveries to all of science. In the ensuing months, exchange between the two men grew more acrimonious and soon Newton threatened to quit the Society altogether. He remained only when several other members assured him that the Fellows held him in high esteem. However, the rivalry with Hooke continued for several years afterward. Then, in 1678, Newton suffered a complete nervous breakdown and the correspondence abruptly ended. The death of his mother the following year completed his isolation and for six years he withdrew from intellectual exchange except when others initiated correspondence, which he always kept short.

During his hiatus from public life, Isaac Newton returned to his study of gravitation and its effects on the orbits of planets. Ironically, the impetus that put Newton on the right direction in this study came from Robert Hooke. In a 1679 letter of general correspondence to Royal Society members for contributions, Hooke wrote to Newton and brought up the question of planetary motion suggesting that a formula involving the inverse squares might explain the attraction between planets and the shape of their orbits. Subsequent exchanges transpired before Newton quickly broke off the correspondence once again. But Hooke's idea was soon incorporated into Newton's work on planetary motion and from his notes it appears he had quickly drawn his own conclusions by 1680, though he kept his discoveries to himself.

1n early 1684, in a conversation with fellow Royal Society members Christopher Wren and Edmund Halley, Hooke made is case on the proof for planetary motion. Both Wren and Halley thought he was on to something, but pointed out that a mathematical demonstration was needed. In August, 1684, Halley traveled to Cambridge to visit with Newton, who was coming out of his seclusion. Halley idly asked him what shape the orbit of a planet would take if its attraction to the sun followed the inverse square of the distance between them (Hooke’s theory). Newton knew the answer due to his concentrated work for the past six years and replied "an ellipse." Newton claimed to have solved the problem some eighteen years ago during his hiatus from Cambridge and the plague, but he was unable to find his notes. Halley persuaded him to work out the problem mathematically and offered to pay all costs so that the ideas might be published.

Publishing Principia
In 1687, after eighteen months of intense and effectively nonstop work, Newton published Philosophiae, Natrualis, Principia Mathematica (The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy). Said to be the most single influential book on physics and possibly all of science, it is most often known as Principia and contains nearly all the essential concepts of physics, except energy. The work offers an exact quantitative description of bodies in motion in three basic laws: 1) a stationary body will stay stationary unless an external force is applied to it; 2) force is equal to mass times acceleration and a change in motion is proportional to the force applied; 3) for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. These three laws not only helped explain elliptical planetary orbits but nearly every other motion in the universe: how the planets are kept in orbit by the pull of the sun’s gravity; how the moon revolves around earth and the moons of Jupiter revolve around it; how comets revolve in elliptical orbits around the sun. The laws also allowed Newton to calculate the mass of each planet, calculate the flattening of the Earth at the polls and the bulge at the equator, and how gravitational pull of the sun and moon create the Earth’s tides. In Newton's account, the force he called gravity, kept the universe balanced, made it work, and brought heaven and earth together in one great equation.

Upon the publication of the first edition of Principia, Robert Hooke immediately accused Newton of plagiarism, claiming he had discovered the theory of inverse squares. The charge was unfounded, as most scientists knew, for Hooke had only theorized on the idea and had never brought it to any level of proof. However, Newton was furious and strongly defended his discoveries. He withdrew all references to Hooke in his notes and threatened to withdraw from publishing the subsequent edition of Principia altogether. Halley had invested much of himself in Newton’s work and tried to make peace between the two men. While Newton begrudgingly agreed to insert a joint acknowledgement of Hooke’s work (shared with Wren and Halley) in his discussion of the law of inverse squares, it did nothing to placate Hooke. As the years went on, Hooke's life began to unravel. His beloved niece and companion died the year Principia was published. As Newton's reputation and fame grew, Hooke's declined and he grew even more bitter and loathsome toward his rival. To the bitter end, Hooke took every opportunity he could to offend Newton. Knowing that is rival would soon be elected president of the Society, Hooke refused to retire until his death in 1703.

International prominence
The Principia immediately raised Isaac Newton to international prominence and he became more involved in public affairs. Consciously or unconsciously he was ready for a new direction in life. He no longer found contentment in his position at Cambridge and he was becoming more involved in other issues. He helped lead the resistance to King James II’s attempts to reinstitute Catholic teaching at Cambridge and in 1689, he was elected to represent Cambridge in Parliament. While in London, Newton acquainted himself with a broader group of intellectuals and became acquainted with political philosopher John Locke. Though many of the scientists on the continent continued to teach the mechanical world according to Aristotle, a young generation of British scientists became captivated with Newton’s new view of the physical world and recognized him as their leader. One of these admirers was Nicholas Fatio de Duillier, a Swiss-born mathematician who Newton befriended while in London.

However, within a few years Newton fell into another nervous breakdown in 1693. The cause is open to speculation: overwork, his disappointment over not being appointed to a higher position by England's new monarchs William and Mary, the subsequent loss of his friendship with Duillier, or perhaps chronic mercury poisoning after decades of alchemical research. It's difficult to know the exact cause, but evidence suggests that letters written by Newton to several of his London acquaintances and friends, including Duillier, seemed deranged and paranoiac and accused them of betrayal and conspiracy. Oddly enough, Newton recovered quickly, wrote letters of apology to friends, and was back to work within a few months. He emerged with all his intellectual facilities intact, but seemed to have lost interest in scientific problems and now favored pursuing prophecy and scripture and the study of alchemy. While some might see this as work beneath the man who had revolutionized science, it might be more attributed to Newton responding to the issues of the time in turbulent 17th century Britain. Many intellectuals were grappling with the meaning of many different subjects, not least of which were religion, politics, and the very purpose of life. Modern science was still so new, no one knew for sure how it measured up against older philosophies.

In 1696, Isaac Newton was able to attain the governmental position he had long sought, Warden of the Mint. He permanently moved to London and lived with his niece, Catherine Barton. She was the mistress of Lord Halifax, a high-ranking government official who was instrumental in having Newton promoted to Master of the Mint in 1699, a position he would hold until his death. Not to be considered a mere honorary position, Newton approached the job with earnest, reforming the currency and severely punishing counterfeiters. As Master of the Mint, Newton moved the British currency, the Pound Sterling, from the silver to the gold standard.

In 1703, Newton was elected president of the Royal Society upon Robert Hooke’s death. In 1705, he was knighted by Queen Anne. At this point in his life,Isaac Newton's career in science and discovery had given way to a career of political power and influence. Newton never seemed to understand the notion of science as a cooperative venture and his own ambition and fierce defense of his own discoveries continued to lead him from one conflict after another with other scientists. By most accounts, Newton's tenure at the Society was tyrannical and autocratic. He was able to control the lives and careers of younger scientists with absolute power. In 1705, in a controversy that had been brewing for several years, German mathematician Gottfried Liebniz publically accused Newton of plagiarizing his research, claiming he had discovered infinitesimal calculus several years before the publication of Principia. In 1712 the Royal Society appointed a committee to investigate the matter. Of course, with Newton as president, he was able to appoint the committee members and oversee its investigation. Not surprisingly, the committee concluded Newton’s priority over the discovery.

That same year, in another of Isaac Newton's more flagrant episodes of tyranny, he published without permission the notes of astronomer John Flamsteed. It seems the astronomer had collected a massive body of data from his years at the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, England. Newton had requested a large volume of Flamsteed's notes for his revisions to Principia. Annoyed when Flamsteed wouldn’t provide him more information as quickly as he wanted it, Newton used his influence as president of the Royal Society to be named the chairman of the body of “visitors” responsible for the Royal Observatory. Then he tried to force the immediate publication of Flamsteed's catalogue of the stars, all of Flamsteed’s notes, edited and unedited. To add insult to injury, Newton arranged for Flamsteed's mortal enemy Edmund Halley, to prepare the notes for press. Flamsteed was finally able to get a court order to have Newton cease his plans for publication and return the notes back to him, one of the few times Newton was bested by one of his rivals.

Final Years
Towards the end of this life, Isaac lived at Cranbury Park, near Winchester with his niece, Catherine Conduitt, and her husband. He was one of the most famous men in Europe. His scientific discoveries were unchallenged. He also had become wealthy, investing his sizeable income wisely and bestowing sizeable gifts to charity. He never married nor made many friends. In his later years a combination of pride, insecurity, and side-trips on peculiar scientific inquiries led even some of his few friends to worry about his mental stability. By the time he reached eighty years of age, he was experiencing digestion problems and had to drastically change his diet and mobility. On March 19, 1727 he experienced severe pain in his abdomen and blacked out, never to regain consciousness. He died the next day at age eighty-five. His fame grew even more after his death as many of his contemporaries proclaimed him the greatest genius that ever lived. Maybe a slight exaggeration, but his discoveries had an impact on Western thought that can be compared with figures like Plato, Aristotle,and Galileo. Although his discoveries were among many made during the Scientific Revolution, his universal principles of gravity found no parallels in science at the time. Of course, Newton was proven wrong on some of his key assumptions. In the 20th century, Albert Einstein would overturn Newton's concept of the universe, stating that space, distance, and motion were not absolute but relative and that the universe was more fantastic than Newton ever conceived. Newton himself may not have been surprised. In his later life, when asked for an assessment of his achievements, he replied, "I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself now and then in finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me."

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Telescope belonging to Sir Isaac Newton



Isaac Newton Using a Prism to Analyze the Colors in a Ray of Light



His most famous creation is the Cenotaph to Isaac Newton of 1784

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Some Unknown Facts About Sir Isaac Newton!

His Birth Was Premature

Isaac Newton wasn't expected to survive as he was born prematurely. It is said that he was so small when he was born that he could have fit inside a quart mug.

He Was Almost a Farmer

Newton's mother insisted that he becomes a farmer when he was 17 because he was born in a farming family. If it weren't for his uncle, he would have never attended Trinity College in Cambridge.

He Kept His Publications Secret

Although majority of Newton's discoveries were made when he was in his early to mid twenties, he didn't publish them until many years later. This resulted in many arguments over credit.

The True Story About Newton and His Apple

We always heard of a story that Newton was walking around his garden at Woolsthorpe Manor when he saw a falling apple, inspired by which he formulated the theory of universal gravitation. But Newton himself said that he was in his house staring through the window when he saw an apple fall from a tree.

Newton Was an Alchemist

Newton had a secret interest in alchemy. His studies regarding alchemy (the making of gold and silver from a base metal) were kept secret as it was a crime under an act of 1404. He recorded his studies in willfully cryptic language.

Newton Was Extremely Religious

Even though people use Newton's work, particularly the law of motion and universal gravitation to argue against the existence of God, Newton himself was extremely religious. He used to say that, "Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who set the planets in motion. God governs all things and knows all that is or can be done." Despite his deep religious belief, Newton didn't believe the existence of spirits and ghosts.

Newton Was Passionate About The Bible

Newton was so passionate about Bible that he wrote more about religion than about science and mathematics! He calculated the date of the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ as April 3, A.D. 33. He even predicted that the Jews would return to Israel. He was also passionate to find the hidden meanings in the Bible.

As a Politician He Uttered Just One Sentence

Newton served as a Member of Parliament for exactly one year (1689 - 1690). During all the lengthy proceedings, he spoke only once: he asked a nearby person to close an open window!

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The father of modern science also happened to stick needles in his eye and send criminals to their deaths.

Alchemist. Scourge of evil. Titan of science. How could one person possibly be all three? Well, that’s how it is when you’re Sir Isaac Newton (1643-1727).

In the arena of science, Newton is as renowned as names get. His world-changing Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, first printed in 1687, presented Newton’s famous laws of motion and of universal gravitation. His work provided the foundation upon which modern physics stands, and ranks among the most important books in science history.

But the Principia was by no means Newton’s only effort. He also contributed seminal work in the fields of optics and calculus, plus a great deal more. And by “more,” we mean some pretty weird and astonishing stuff. For example:

Newton Tried to Turn Lead to Gold

Newton’s tireless mind wasn’t content to restrict itself to hard science. He also studied and performed extensive experiments in the field of alchemy, a branch of pseudoscience whose practitioners sought to transmute base metals into precious gold or silver, among much else. Surviving papers indicate Newton even had a recipe for the philosophers’ stone, the holy grail of alchemy. This substance was deemed essential for changing lead to gold, curing all manner of diseases, and unlocking the secrets of immortality itself. Alas, none of these alchemical efforts panned out for Newton. It was his true scientific work that ultimately won him immortality of a different kind.

He Nearly Gave Himself a Lobotomy

Like many scientists throughout history, Newton had no qualms about testing ideas on himself. As part of his studies on optics as a young man, Newton thought it necessary to see how the shape of the human eye affected perception of color. So, he inserted a bodkin — a type of large, blunt needle — in between his eyelid and eyeball. Then he moved the bodkin around and used it to exert pressure on the eyeball. If you’re still reading after that grisly detail, you’ll be relieved to know the exercise produced visions of colored circles, but otherwise appeared to do Newton no lasting harm. Still, an ill-timed sneeze could have changed the history of science as we know it.

He Almost Went Blind Staring at the Sun

When a blunt needle wasn’t handy, Newton's continued ocular abuse included staring at the sun — more specifically, at a mirror positioned to reflect the sun’s light at him while he stood in an otherwise darkened room (so that his pupils would be fully dilated). As any 5-year-old today could tell you, to view the sun with the naked eye is to risk permanent damage, even blindness. But Newton lucked out again. Despite performing this experiment multiple times, Newton suffered only short-term misery, which included several days of seeing really bright spots and hiding in a dark room until he recovered. But these and other observations informed Newton’s research in optics and his theory of light and culminated in the 1704 publication of another of Newton’s great and influential works, the appropriately titled Optiks.

He Struck Terror in the Hearts of Criminals

With the Principia published and his legacy secure as one of the greatest scientific minds of all time, Newton made an unexpected career change in 1696: He accepted an appointment as warden (and later master) of the Royal Mint, which was responsible for making England’s hard currency. Newton served the Mint until his death and took his duties very seriously, particularly when it came to counterfeiters, which he pursued with the kind of zeal that makes Batman look like a boy scout. Despite his advancing years, Newton showed tremendous personal initiative bringing evildoers to justice. He infiltrated the underworld; personally cross-examined hundreds of suspects and witnesses; and almost single-handedly secured the conviction of more than two dozen counterfeiters. Forging currency carried the death penalty at that time, and Newton was merciless in seeing perpetrators prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Not all heroes wear capes, it seems (instead, Newton appeared to be fond of floor-length coats).

About That Apple …

If you remember nothing else from school lessons about Newton, you probably recall learning that Newton’s “Eureka!” moment regarding gravity arrived while he was sitting under an apple tree. Legend has it that a falling apple struck Newton on the head, causing him to wonder why the apple would fall to Earth and not in some other direction. The labor of this fruit, as it were, eventually led to the ideas later expounded in Newton’s Principia. Although sometimes dismissed as fictitious, a version of this event may have actually happened. In his 1752 biography, Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton’s Life, William Stukeley recounted the story as told by Newton himself. In this version, the apple didn’t necessarily hit Newton; he merely observed it falling to the ground. But thankfully for posterity and for science, the gravity of the moment was not lost on Newton nor his biographer.

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For centuries some of the world’s greatest geniuses struggled in secret to turn base metals into gold. In a sense they succeeded: In their restless quest, they unlocked some of nature’s greatest secrets.

Isaac Newton, famed scientist and alchemist.

Lawrence Principe was sorting through a collection of old chemistry books at the Chemical Heritage Foundation in Philadelphia when he stumbled upon a forgotten manuscript handwritten by Sir Isaac Newton. Any Newton manuscript is of interest, but this one was worth its weight in gold, literally — as Principe, a chemist and historian of science at Johns Hopkins University, recognized immediately.

Holding the yellowed manuscript in his hands and studying the scribbled words, he understood that he was looking at one of the best-kept secrets in the history of science. Today revered as the father of modern physics and the inventor of calculus, Newton was describing a recipe for the Philosophers’ Stone, a legendary substance that reputedly could turn base metals like iron and lead into gold.

Newton’s dabblings in alchemy are well known, but his belief that he had found the closely guarded blueprint for the Philosophers’ Stone was astonishing indeed.

Isaac Newton and Robert Boyle's Pursuit of Gold

Newton was not the only intellectual heavyweight from his era trying to make gold. The recipe for the Philosophers’ Stone had come from his older contemporary, the famed British chemist Robert Boyle. As it turns out, Boyle was a devotee of alchemy too.

If two of the greatest scientists who ever lived were dedicated alchemists, then alchemy needs a makeover, a big one, contend Principe and his colleague William Newman, a historian of science at Indiana University. Back in the day, the two argue, alchemy was not the misguided pseudoscience that most people think it was. Rather, it was a valuable and necessary phase in the development of modern chemistry.

Among alchemy’s signature accomplishments: creating new alloys; manufacturing acids and pigments; inventing apparatus for distillation, the process used in making perfumes and whiskeys; conceiving of atoms centuries before modern atomic theory; and providing a template for the scientific method by running controlled experiments again and again.

Rediscovering Alchemy’s Place in History

Aiming to restore alchemy to its rightful status, Principe and Newman — who came to the field separately but joined forces after meeting at a conference in 1989 — went through medieval alchemical texts, letters, and laboratory notebooks filled with odd symbols and coded language. Then they did something unheard-of in recent times: They made replicas of the laboratory glassware used by 15th-, 16th-, and 17th-century alchemists and re-created their experiments firsthand.

“There were reasons that alchemists thought they could make gold,” Newman says. “They had theories about the nature of metals that made them believe they could manipulate their structure. They also conducted experiments that they believed proved minerals could be made to grow.”

In an age when there were no microscopes to penetrate living cells and no understanding of the nature of atoms and molecules, the alchemists were not misguided so much as misinformed, doing their best to make sense of a world they could not see. That they understood as much as they did is the real marvel: In pursuing what today seems like little more than witchcraft, the alchemists were in fact laying the foundation for modern experimental science.

A Surprising Path to Alchemy

Newman did not know much about alchemy as an undergraduate at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in the mid-1970s. His passion at the time was literature. When he started to study the poets William Blake and William Butler Yeats, he did what young academics always do: He checked out their sources.

To his surprise, he found that both poets had drawn inspiration from alchemy. Newman noted that Blake was born in 1757 and that Yeats died in 1939: “They reflected a creative interest in alchemy that spanned the late 18th to the early 20th century — exactly the ‘rational’ period of the Enlightenment and of modern science — at the same time that most historians were branding alchemy delusional.” What was going on? he wondered.

Geber and Alchemy's Medieval Legacy

Newman decided to look more closely at the alchemists who had influenced Blake and Yeats. These included a shadowy 13th-century figure known as Geber, whose magnum opus was called The Sum of Perfection. “Not a modest title, right?” Newman says, laughing.

Some historians had identified Geber as the translated name of an eighth-century Islamic alchemist, but Newman’s research turned up evidence supporting a different interpretation: Geber was actually the alias of Paul of Taranto, an obscure Franciscan monk from southern Italy. To alchemists toiling and tinkering in the laboratory, Geber was an infallible master; his book was regarded as the bible of alchemy. “That’s how much influence he had,” Newman says.

Geber’s Groundbreaking Chemistry and Physics Theories

Whoever Geber was, Newman was struck by the range of ideas in his book, which contains everything from details about refining metals to a description of the essential behaviors of matter. It was clear that medieval alchemists were struggling with fundamental questions that would later become central to chemistry and physics.

For instance, Geber believed that all matter was composed of invisible particles called corpuscles and that these corpuscles could be manipulated even though they could not be directly observed. He wrote about all sorts of material transformations (what we would now call chemical reactions) in terms of microparticles and pores, using concepts and terminology that foreshadowed the thinking that would emerge during the Scientific Revolution three centuries later.

The Three Elements of Alchemy

The way to manipulate corpuscles, Geber instructed, was to “follow nature wherever possible.” In other words, alchemists had to discern and then mimic natural processes. Their idea of natural processes was much different from ours, however. “Most alchemists believed metals were not elements as we think of them today,” Newman says, “but rather compounds of sulfur and mercury or sometimes mercury, sulfur, and salt.”

Sulfur was what made metal hard, they theorized; mercury made it more fluid. In that framework, iron was composed primarily of sulfur. Gold, which was malleable and softer, consisted mostly of mercury. Though the alchemists missed the mark, their conception was not too far from an understanding of pure metals as distinct from alloys and ores.

The Quest for the Philosophers’ Stone

Misunderstanding which materials were elemental and which were composites led the alchemists to believe they could create gold from lead or other base metals if only they got the formula right. And the essential ingredient that would make it all happen? The elusive Philosophers’ Stone.

Alchemists before Geber had used all sorts of ingredients derived from plants and animals in an attempt to make the Stone. Some had even experimented with human blood. According to Newman, one of the earliest promoters of science through experimentation, the 13th-century philosopher Roger Bacon, argued that creating the Philosophers’ Stone required blood because each person was thought to be a microcosm of the whole world. Therefore, human blood contained at least a little of everything in nature.

Geber, who tried to create gold by removing sulfur and adding mercury, pooh-poohed this idea in The Sum of Perfection. Using “organic materials as blood, fat, saliva, and so forth was irrational,” he wrote, “since Nature herself does not make the metals beneath the earth from human blood.” Geber’s way of thinking became the new standard for medieval alchemists as they started distilling mercury and combining it with different metals in an effort to make the Philosophers’ Stone.

The Evolution of Alchemy in the Renaissance

As Newman read old alchemical texts, he discovered that by the late 15th and early 16th centuries (the time of da Vinci and the beginning of the Renaissance), alchemists had refined not just mercury but also their core ideas about matter. Newman links this shift in alchemical thinking to the wondrous new stories that miners of silver and copper ore in central Europe were then telling, of giant trunks of minerals branching out into limblike veins deep underground.

The mineral finds were real — deposits of metallic silver truly can spread out in rock in shapes that resemble huge, intricate trees — but the interpretation was not: The apparent similarity between these deposits and trees inspired the notion that minerals might develop and change like living things. Renaissance alchemists now theorized that base metals (the ones earlier alchemists thought were made mostly of sulfur) were imperfectly developed, or immature, forms of gold.

“In other words,” Newman says, “gold was the perfectly ripe ‘fruit’ into which subterranean base metals would eventually grow if left long enough within the earth.”

The Ultimate Goal of Alchemy

Following this line of thought, alchemists believed that gold became inert and stopped growing once it was removed from the earth, just as a flower dies after being plucked from a plant. There should be a way, then, to bring mined gold back to life. Reanimating gold, the reasoning went, would be easier than adjusting the formula of base metals by adding and removing sulfur and mercury.

Thus began the Renaissance equivalent of the great California gold rush. Well-trained, intellectual alchemists sold the prospect of making gold to rich patrons, and less well-educated alchemists with day jobs tinkered the night away trying to make gold in makeshift kitchen laboratories. According to Newman, “the 17th century was the age of gold, both searching for it and making it.”

The Mystery of Eirenaeus Philalethes

In his ongoing investigation into this remarkable era, Newman became intrigued by one of the most influential of the 17th-century alchemists — another mysterious figure, a man named Eirenaeus Philalethes, who was said to live in colonial America. His real identity was cloaked in secrecy, but his alchemical writings were read throughout Europe.

Detective work by Newman proved that Philalethes did not really exist. Another respected American alchemist, George Starkey, had created him out of thin air to boost his career. In the European alchemy circles Starkey inhabited, he could boast that he was the only one who had met the great Philalethes. Better yet, Starkey confided to Robert Boyle, Philalethes had told him part of the top-secret process for making the Philosophers’ Stone.

Boyle’s Fascination with Alchemy

In 1651 Boyle took the bait and asked Starkey to teach him chemistry so he could make the Stone himself. (Boyle, considered the father of modern chemistry, knew almost nothing about it until he studied under Starkey, according to Newman.)

A Boyle notebook uncovered by Principe in the mid-1990s describes how a wandering alchemist seemingly transformed lead into gold before his eyes. “The powder that was employ’d in the operations was not weigh’d,” Boyle wrote. “I cannot tell precisely how many parts of lead were transmuted by it, but I remember the Gold weigh’d much above half an ounce.”

Whatever Boyle actually saw, it was enough to convince him that making gold was possible.

Principe’s Immersion into Alchemy

Like Newman’s, scientists’s immersion in the labyrinthine world of alchemy began in college, in his case in the early 1980s, after he read The Twelve Keys, an allegorical work written in the 15th century by an influential alchemist and supposed Benedictine monk, Basil Valentine. In his work, Valentine included an illustration that, Principe suspected, depicted a method for rendering gold — normally one of the most stable elements — volatile.

Looking around for other documents describing the volatility of gold, he found a treasure trove of writings on alchemy by Boyle. One of those manuscripts included a description of an absolutely real substance then called Philosophical Mercury — a liquid form of mercury that could dissolve gold slowly, a pivotal stage in gold making.

Newton’s Search for the Philosophers’ Stone

Today Principe suspects that Philosophical Mercury was the prized ingredient that Isaac Newton had sought from Boyle for years — a crucial component for making the Philosophers’ Stone. But like most alchemists, Boyle kept the details of his alchemical work hidden; he even withheld a part of the recipe for making red earth, which he believed was the direct precursor to the Philosophers’ Stone.

“Red earth was thought to be about as close to the Philosophers’ Stone as you could get,” Principe explains. “It was said to change lead into gold, but a lot less efficiently than the Philosophers’ Stone itself. It was assumed that if you could create red earth, it would be relatively simple to get to the Philosophers’ Stone from there.”

The age of scientific transparency was still a good century or two away.

Newton’s Secretive Alchemical Practices

Newton was even more secretive than Boyle, disguising his alchemical investigations (he wrote more than a million unpublished words on the subject) with codes, obscure symbols for chemicals, and colorful metaphors. His notes contain cryptic references to “Green Lion,” “Neptune’s Trident,” and the “Scepter of Jove.” Newman has not yet figured out what substances any of these terms refer to.

To really understand what Newton was seeing in his laboratory, Newman realized in 2002, he needed to repeat some of the old alchemical experiments himself. He started by building replicas of alchemical furnaces and glassware, including distilling apparatus, with the help of Indiana University’s chemistry department.

One key alchemical experiment was called the Tree of Diana, a magical-looking demonstration that metals could grow like vegetation. Newman learned that the Tree of Diana really works. “If you immerse a solid amalgam of silver and mercury in nitric acid with dissolved silver and mercury, you produce tiny, twiglike branches of solid silver,” he says.

Today this process is regarded as a simple matter of chemistry. But to Newton, the Tree of Diana was evidence that metals could be made to grow and, therefore, “possessed a sort of life.”

Alchemists’ Legacy of Experimentation

The image of the growing metallic tree can be found in another type of experiment, one that Starkey, Boyle, and very likely Newton all conducted: the attempt to synthesize the Philosophers’ Stone. Principe, who had studied the alchemical work of all three men, came to the same conclusion as Newman and decided that he, too, had to replicate the long-abandoned alchemical experiments firsthand.

He culled recipes from alchemists like Starkey and, after “a lengthy process involving various materials and numerous distillations,” obtained Philosophical Mercury, just as Boyle had 350 years earlier. Principe mixed the Philosophical Mercury with gold, sealed it in a glass egg, and watched. Just as Starkey and other alchemists reported, strange things started to happen inside the egg. The mixture began to bubble, rising “like leavened dough,” Principe says.

Then it turned pasty and liquid and, after several days of heating, transformed into what he likens to a “dendritic fractal”: another metallic tree, like the trees the miners saw underground, only this one was made of gold and mercury.

Alchemists’ Role in Shaping Modern Science

Principe’s tree, like all the trees any alchemist managed to create, did not actually grow any gold, of course; the gold that came out was no greater than the amount that he put in. But the experiments proved something that Principe had long suspected. Alchemists were not just tinkering blindly. In fact, they produced what he calls “a solid body of repeated and repeatable observations of laboratory results.”

In their tightly controlled experiments they made metals bubble, change colors, and grow sparkling filaments, and they did it over and over again, establishing, in a crude way, the foundations of scientific experimentation. In the process they were learning fundamental principles of chemistry: breaking down ores, dissolving metals with acids, and precipitating metals out of solution.

Newton’s Mental Breakdown and the End of Alchemy

Ever since he found that singular Newton manuscript, Principe has wondered what was going on in the mind of one of history’s most brilliant scientists. How close did Newton and Boyle think they had come to making gold? Did they believe that with just a few more tweaks, their experiments would eventually work? Principe says yes, they probably did.

Why, otherwise, would the highly apolitical Boyle have lobbied the Houses of Parliament to overturn a law forbidding gold making? “He was a very scrupulous man, and before he went about doing transmutation, he wanted to make sure it wasn’t against the law,” Principe says.

Further evidence of their seriousness emerged after Boyle’s death in 1691. In life, Boyle had guarded his recipe for red earth as if it were the most precious thing in the world. But upon his death, his executor, the philosopher John Locke, also an alchemist, was more generous, sending Newton the recipe along with a sample that Boyle had made before his death.

No one knows what Newton did with the red earth. Principe notes that Newton suffered a mental breakdown a year after Boyle’s death and wonders if that episode might have been brought on by mercury poisoning. After all, the first steps in making red earth require repeatedly heating and cooling mercury.

“Shortly after he would have gotten copies of this recipe, he was distilling mercury,” Principe says. But Newman thinks that Newton’s breakdown is just as likely to be related to Locke’s trying to set him up with a well-to-do widow. “Newton had a sort of pathological fear of females, and around that time Locke was pressuring him to date. That may be what pushed him over the edge,” he notes.

Newton is believed to have died a virgin, according to historian Gale Christianson.

Alchemy’s Legacy in Modern Chemistry

No matter how skillfully the two giants of 17th-century science manipulated the red earth and set their sights on the Philosophers’ Stone, they would have failed to make gold. We know now that such a transformation requires not a chemical reaction but a nuclear one, far beyond the reach of the technology of the time.

By the early 18th century, alchemists had given up on their quest for gold. “They’d figured out that in a practical way their attempts to make the Philosophers’ Stone never worked,” Newman says. That does not mean that their other work was abandoned, however. As Newman says, “The goals of 18th-century chemistry — namely, to understand the material composition of things through analysis and synthesis and to make useful products such as pharmaceuticals, pigments, porcelain, and various refined chemicals — were largely inherited from the 16th- and 17th-century alchemists.”

Without the pioneering alchemists, none of that would have been possible. “They were the masters of premodern chemical technology,” Newman says. As the true power and limitations of chemistry came into focus, interest in the Philosophers’ Stone simply faded away, much as the belief in the classical Four Elements had faded away centuries before. Almost overnight, the perception of alchemy became conflated with an unforgiving view of the protoscientific world as one populated by mystics and superstitious fools.

As for Isaac Newton’s prized sample of red earth from John Locke, it was very likely thrown out after Newton died in 1727. Unless someone kept it. Imagine a little packet of Philosophers’ Stone stuck between the pages of a book from Newton’s library. If it is out there, for the sake of alchemy and science, let’s hope Newman and Principe are the ones who find it.