Many of us have enjoyed Kathleen Krull's Lives of the Presidents, Lives of the Athletes, and so on. Isaac Newton is the second book in the new series, Giants of Science, and a marvelous book it is!
We meet Isaac Newton the man, with all his hatreds, fears, and idiosyncrasies, as we read about his investigations of light, motion, and matter. Fascinated and frustrated with alchemy, Newton was in some ways a Harry Potter. Cambridge University, where Newton was Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, was not unlike Hogwarts in atmosphere. Here the similarities end. Seventeenth century England was a place where the temperamental Newton verbally sparred with Robert Hooke, Robert Boyle, and Edmund Halley. It was Newton who bridged the gap from a mysterious natural world to modern science based on observation and hypothesis. His laws of motion form the basis for classical physics.
Check out other biographies in the series, including the soon to be published biography of Albert Einstein, who called Newton the greatest genius of all time:
1 comment:
I read this book and it was very interesting. I think that Newton was a great scientist despite what he thought of himself. I have also read Kathleen Krull's biography on Leonardo Da Vinci and recommend that.
Hannah F.
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