Sir Isaac Newton is regarded as a genius. I recently got hold of his biography written by James Gleick, who has also authored Genius and Chaos. I always wanted to know more about Newton’s life. Having known Einstein’s biography, I was curious to know how Newton’s life was. “Newton was not a pleasant man“, is a statement about him that always comes to my mind, after having read Stephen Hawking’s review about Isaac Newton. He had too many adversaries and never had any friends. He was very lonely in his life ever since he was born. He was fatherless and his mother never wanted him. He neither got married nor did he ever involve in any relationship with any woman. His life is really intriguing.After knowing such less facts about his life, I always wanted to read more about his life. This book is very small and gives a brief overview of Newton’s life. It is not very technical with too many details. I found it little disappointing since it is written in a layman language, helpful for non-science students. There is no mathematics at all in it, which is what I expected to find. But still it mentions all the concepts in Mathematics that Newton came up with, starting with Differential and Integral calculus to Binomial theorems, Ellipses, curves, centre of curvature, radius of curvature, cycloid etc. Even though I knew about some of his works, I never knew that Newton has contributed so much to Science and Mathematics, until I read the book. I am really in awe of this man.He truly is a genius. I cannot think of another scientist who can be of match to him. No wonder he was the first scientist to receive Knighthood. It also talks about all the arguments that Newton got involved into. The famous one with Leibniz over calculus, the hatredness that Hooke and he had for each other. It also speaks of how he took Flamsteed’s findings and published them even though Flamsteed did not approve of it. It also talks about Newton’s interests in alchemy and his work on element Mercury, which I did not have much idea about. It also talks about Newton’s interest in Biblical matters. His contributions to time, space and motion, his findings on planetary motion, movement of the moon, tides, comets are commendable. He invented the reflecting telescope (one of which I own).Now that gravity is like a matter of common sense these days, it is interesting to know what people felt back then. How people thought it was something supernatural or magical and how they condemned Newton for that. I loved the lines which Newton had written and the author has quoted where he says that he did not care about what others thought and that he was satisfied that it had a mathematical backing And like I had read earlier that the apple falling on the head did not lead him to find out gravity, the author confirms this theory saying Newton never mentioned that in any of his notebooks.One of the most interesting facts about Newton that I learned was that Newton never did any kind of research to get acclaim. He worked on problems and came up with solutions only for “himself”. He always wanted to learn the ways of nature and it was his thirst for knowledge that made him explore more. Another interesting fact about him was that even though he had done lot of work on light and color, only after others forced him, he published his work after thirty years. He never published his findings, he liked to keep them to himself. The author says a lot about Newton’s involvement with Royal society and how he ended up becoming the president of it later on.What I liked in the book were the quotes, statements, figures drawn/written by Newton himself that the author has quoted. It feels good to read what Newton had written in letters to other scientists or the notes that he took in his book about his findings. Because of the presence of such authentic writings, you tend to believe in everything the author says about Newton. A thorough research about his life has been done by James Gleick and he needs to be praised for that.However not much light has been cast on some of the important phases of Newton’s life. He had a nervous breakdown at the age of fifty or so and I really wanted to know more about how he recovered from it, but it has been very briefly mentioned. Even though the author has mentioned lines from letters that Newton wrote to other scientists, it still felt incomplete.Overall: It is a great book if you want to know more about Newton’s life. A very interesting read and because of its size, does not take much time to complete it. I would give this book 4/5.
After reading Quicksilver, the first book in Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle, I became very interested to learn more about some the historical figures around whom the story revolved – Robert Hooke, Robert Boyle, John Wilkens, Christopher Wren, …, and Isaac Newton, the founders and early members of the Royal Society. Given my interest in physics, optics, and math, especially Isaac Newton.Fortunately for me, James Gleick’s biography of Newton, simply titled Isaac Newton, was published earlier that year (2003). Gleick was not new to me – both Chaos: Making a New Science and Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman, have a place on my bookshelves – so I had high hopes for his biography of Newton. I was not disappointed.Chances are you’ve heard of Isaac Newton, if for nothing else than the fact that he came up with the idea of gravity when he saw an apple fall from a tree. (Which, by the way, is a vast oversimplification.) You may have even heard of his 3 laws of motion or that he invented – some might say discovered – the calculus. You may even think that he invented calculus so he could figure out his laws of motion. (As it turns out, he used geometry.)Newton didn’t actually publish – or care to publish – his work in mathematics, or anything else, until someone else published similar work. Unlike the rest of the fellows of the Royal Society, who were interested in sharing their new found knowledge as much as possible, Newton experimented and discovered and wrote to satisfy his own curiosity, not that of anyone else. Only in the very recent past have the many documents of Newton come to light, and it is through these many documents that Gleick tells this unique story of arguably the greatest mind ever.Considering the subject, the book is relatively short with just under 200 pages of main text and about 50 pages of notes. It is a pretty quick read, though I did find that flipping back and forth to the end notes tended to slow me down. And if you are looking for detailed discussion and analysis of the actual content of Newton’s various writings, this is not your book.If, however, you want to gain an understanding of what drove Newton, of why he wanted to figure things out, and get a glimpse into his incredible mind, this is an excellent book with which to begin.
What do You think about Isaac Newton (2004)?
This is a very compelling look at the life of an extraordinarily brilliant and complex man who profoundly influenced the course of modern history. Living as we do in an era when science and religion tend to be seen as fundamentally contradictory, it is fascinating to read of the curious young theologian who truly believed God's greatest wish was for humanity to discover the mechanisms that drive the movements of the universe—to, as Newton described it, transcend the finite boundaries of our being and reach toward infinity itself.As in all writings on Newton, there is the requisite clarification of the mythology surrounding him—yes, he did spend much time in his uncle's apple orchard during his early twenties, when he began developing the new mathematics that would come be known as the calculus, and no, he did not "discover" gravity or incur any apple-induced head injuries. But mostly, Gleick's biography is a look at Newton's humanity, and the sometimes intriguing, sometimes revolting contradictions that defined his charismatic personality. One sees, for instance, Newton's all but pathological paranoia over others stealing his ideas, and then the disturbing irony that several of the most famous quotes attributed to him—indeed, those usually presented as evidence of his humility and nobility of spirit—were, in fact, almost entirely plagiarized from his predecessors.Being a biography, this book is not primarily aimed at exploring the specifics of Newton's scientific or mathematical discoveries. However, one could no more write a biography of Newton without some discussion of mathematics than one could explain Mozart without reference to music. It is therefore helpful to have a small amount of familiarity with calculus and physics. That being said, there were scientific matters in the book that I didn't understand, and I didn't find that to be a problem.Truly a fascinating story of an incredibly influential historical figure.
—Ben Siems
A first rate biography of Isaac Newton. The biography is a relatively short, standard cradle-to-grave account, with significant discussions of Newton's scientific thinking and discoveries, starting with mathematics, then optics, and finally physics -- not counting alchemy, biblical studies, and his role as master of the mint.James Gleick puts you directly into Newton's life and world through extensive quotations from letters and other documents, all with the original spellings. In some cases, like Newton's playing with infinite sums, Gleick reproduces a facsimile of the document itself.No scientific life I know is as full of bitter rivalries, secrecy, and a continuum from the ultra-rational to the completely irrational. Towards the end of the book Gleick quotes Keynes' apt description of Newton: "Newton was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians, the last of the Babylonians and Sumerians, the last great mind which looked out on the visible and intellectual world with the same eyes as those who began to build our intellectual inheritance rather less than 10,000 years ago."
—Jason
This book taught me that Isaac Newton was not a one trick pony as many tend to describe him. He was influential in many realms including physics, philosophy, and the monetary system of England, for which he was knighted. While he essentially invented the modern formula for scientific thought, reasoning, and experimentation, he was a human who was subject to petty competition with colleagues and a propensity to cling to beliefs that were not supported by his observations.A contemporary of Edmund Haley, it is interesting to see how the ideas of one man were advanced by the other. It is unlikely that Newton would have thoroughly characterized gravity without Haley's astronomical observations, nor is it likely that Haley would have been able to predict the paths of comets without Newton's ideas of gravity.The last 20% of this book was a bit dry, but the first 80% was top notch and inspiring to me as a scientist. It makes me what to seek out biographies of other great scientists like Max Plank, Christiaan Huygens, and others. I identify with them in my daily work.
—Steven Dzwonczyk
