Contributor

Isaac Newton

(1643 - 1727)

The closure of Cambridge University in 1665 because of the plague—which went on to kill around 100,000 Londoners—forced Isaac Newton to stay at home, where he discovered that white light contained all colors in the spectrum, developed the fundamentals of calculus, and formulated the basics of the law of universal gravitation. He then turned twenty-four. Newton published his masterwork, the Principia Mathematica—a cornerstone of the Scientific Revolution—in 1687.

All Writing

Voices In Time

1665 | Cambridge

True Colors

Isaac Newton is his own test subject.More

Voices In Time

1687 | Cambridge

Law of the Land

Isaac Newton’s rules for investigating phenomena.More

Voices In Time

1704 | London

Laws of Nature

Isaac Newton on the line between science and the occult.More

Miscellany

In 1936 Sotheby’s auctioned many of Isaac Newton’s nonscientific papers, containing much writing about his alchemical interests. A large batch was bought by John Maynard Keynes, who wrote in a lecture published posthumously as “Newton, the Man,” that the physicist and mathematician “was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians.”