Revisiting a Young Isaac Newton
Phys.org · · g6087790
Isaac Newton is typically portrayed as a solitary scientist with intense focus who was obsessed with power and deeply egotistical. But a new book by Caltech historians Jed Buchwald and Mordechai Feingold takes a deeper look at Newton's life in the two decades leading up to the 1687 publication of his groundbreaking text, Principia Mathematica, when he was 44. Using newly digitized scans of Newton's early writings, Buchwald and Feingold uncover a portrait of the young polymath as a curious and social scholar whose interests were often fleeting.
Isaac Newton is typically portrayed as a solitary scientist with intense focus who was obsessed with power and deeply egotistical. But a new book by Caltech historians Jed Buchwald and Mordechai Feingold takes a deeper look at Newton's life in the two decades leading up to the 1687 publication of his groundbreaking text, Principia Mathematica, when he was 44. Using newly digitized scans of Newton's early writings, Buchwald and Feingold uncover a portrait of the young polymath as a curious and social scholar whose interests were often fleeting.