The Alter Isaac Newton

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I have just finished reading a great biography of Isaac Newton by Michael White. This biography is far from the shiny books that relate the life of this physicist. The book shows many not-that-knows aspects of Isaac Newton here are some of them summarized in a grocery list: - Newton was born on December 25th. Some people saw in him a new Christ. - His research was not always driven by reason and maths. He rather considered the universe as a book to be deciphered and he was mostly driven by religious goals. - He spent a great deal of his life working on Alchemy. He spent, very probably much more time working on Alchemy than on Maths and Physics. - He spent a lot of time writing a chronology of the events cited in order to determine the date of the apocalypse. - He was attracted by men. - He had a very bad temper. He went through three major conflicts with other scientists, namely Hook, Flamsteed and Leibniz. He never showed any sense of diplomacy while dealing with those conflicts. On the contrary he was very harsh with Flamsteed and used his connections with the King to harm him. - He showed to be a dictator while he was the president of the Royal Society. He managed to get rid of all members who disagreed with him or that he simply did not like.