Isaac Newton is widely considered to have been a genius. He was an astronomer, mathematician and physicist, whose ideas laid down some of the most important scientific foundations. However, he was also a very odd fellow.
Godfrey Kneller's 1689 portrait of Isaac Newton (age 46)
Newton did not get on too well with others, he was very private and extremely introverted. He seems to have had a bit of a temper and was known to resort to violence, by giving out a beating to those he believed deserved it. Newton also tried to destroy the reputation of Gottfried Leibniz, who had discovered calculus at around the same time as Newton. At university, Newton was generally considered a poor scholar, as he mostly disregarded the subjects that he was supposed to be studying. Luckily, his mathematical genius was noticed.
When he was young he actually made up a list of sins that he had committed
and one of them was "Beating Arthur Storer". Another sin was making a
mousetrap on Sunday and another was "squirting water" on the Sabbath.
Woopie-do!
Woolsthorpe Manor, Lincolnshire, birthplace of Sir Isaac Newton
Newton was also a religious zealot, but he had his own set of radical ideas. He was a Catholic but did not believe in the Trinity. He also believed that worshipping Jesus as God was a sin. Newton did, however, end a friendship with an acquaintance who made a joke about a nun. On his death bed, Newton refused to receive the sacrament and he also said that his greatest achievement in life was that he would die a virgin.
Books To Read
All Cats Have Asperger Syndrome, by Kathy Hoopmann
