Isaac Newton: And the Scientific Revolution (Oxford Portraits in Science) - Softcover

Christianson, Gale E.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0195120809 ISBN 13: 9780195120806

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1998

Synopsis

In 1665, when an epidemic of the plague forced Cambridge University to close, Isaac Newton, then a young, undistinguished scholar, returned to his childhood home in rural England. Away from his colleagues and professors, Newton embarked on one of the greatest intellectual odysseys in the history of science: he began to formulate the law of universal gravitation, developed the calculus, and made revolutionary discoveries about the nature of light. After his return to Cambridge, Newton's genius was quickly recognized and his reputation forever established. This biography also allows us to see the personal side of Newton, whose life away from science was equally fascinating. Quarrelsome, quirky, and not above using his position to silence critics and further his own career, he was an authentic genius with all too human faults.

About this title

About the Author:

Gale E. Christianson is Distinguished Professor, College of Arts and Sciences and Professor of History at Indiana State University. He has twice been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, for In the Presence of the Creator: Isaac Newton and His Times and Fox at the Wood's Edge: A Biography of Loren Eiseley.

From Scientific American:

Born early on Christmas morning of 1642, his illiterate father recently dead, Isaac Newton was raised by his grandmother. His life was fed by his vigorous mind and hands; the lonely boy read widely and filled his days with skywatching, kites, sundials, carving and model making. He attended boarding school near his home, ranking second to last among 80 students, but he graduated at 18 the star of the school and went on to the University of Cambridge. A new college graduate, his genius yet unrecognized, he returned home at age 22, after the university was closed by the coming of plague. For almost two years, he worked alone, establishing the modern methods and much of the matter of theoretical physics for two centuries: the ideas of the calculus, its application to motion for apple and moon alike, gravitation made semiquantitative and perhaps universal, and the nature of white light and color. The resemblance to the young Einstein at the Patent Office in Bern is evident; the human differences between Newton, without wife or nearby friends, and Einstein's happier world are manifest. Less a scientific biography than a personal one, it does not try to popularize Newton's physics. Of course, it includes his entire career, his litigious rivalries, his work style, so secretive and shy, and his voluminous accomplishments, until a complex emotional breakdown took him away to official London at age 52. Newton died wealthy and celebrated, even rather less lonely through his niece, a famous beauty, and her slightly scandalous high-society circle.

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0195120809
• ISBN 13: 9780195120806
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 160