In fact, this volume is more or less identical to the briefer one, published by Oxford in 1996 as part of its young adult Portraits in Science series. Written by prominent authors, these engaging volumes will shed light on the life and work of our leading intellectual, artistic, and historical figures.Christianson has built a small empire of Newton biographies, including the full-length In the Presence of the CreatorĪnd the much briefer Isaac Newton and the Scientific Revolution This book captures both sides of this truly extraordinary man.Ī volume in Oxford's Lives and Legacies series.īrief, erudite, and inviting, the exciting new Lives and Legacies series offers a fresh look at some of the greatest minds in the humanities and sciences. Newton was an authentic genius with all too human faults. Christianson also explores Newton's less savory side, including his long, bitter feud with Robert Hooke and the underhanded way that Newton established his priority in the invention of calculus and tarnished Liebniz's reputation. The book sheds light on Newton's later life as master of the mint in London, where he managed to convict and hang the arch criminal William Chaloner (a remarkable turn for a once reclusive scholar), and his presidency of the Royal Society, which he turned from a dilettante's club into an eminent scientific organization.

Christianson describes Newton's creation of the first working model of the reflecting telescope, which brought him to the attention of the Royal Society, and he illuminates the eighteen months of intense labor that resulted in his Principia, arguably the most important scientific work ever published.

There ensued two miraculous years at home in Woolsthorpe Manor, where he fled when plague threatened Cambridge, a remarkably fertile period when Newton formulated his theory of gravity, a new theory of light, and calculus-all by his twenty-fourth birthday. We follow Newton from his childhood in rural England to his student days at Cambridge, where he devoured the works of Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo, and taught himself mathematics. Christianson paints an engaging portrait of Newton and the times in which he lived.

Now, in this fast-paced, colorful biography, Gale E. Quarrelsome and quirky, a disheveled recluse who ate little, slept less, and yet had an iron constitution, Isaac Newton rose from a virtually illiterate family to become one of the towering intellects of science.

Oxford Research Encyclopedias: Global Public Health.

The European Society of Cardiology Series.

Oxford Commentaries on International Law.

Isaac Newton by Gale E. Christianson