January 4 marks the 376th anniversary of the birth of Isaac Newton.
I learned with interest some details about this man …
Newton did not like to travel and never left England in his life.
He was not fond of sports and was not at all interested in music, theater, or painting, although he himself painted quite decently and wrote poetry in his youth.
He admitted that he would prefer a shoemaker to a poet or comedian, since the former is more useful to society.
Newton had no sense of humor. Even the famous English. The great scientist stuttered slightly when he spoke.
Newton's teeth remained healthy until his death, except one. And in general he was a man of excellent health: to a ripe old age he carried his thick hair and never used glasses.
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Newton was an inveterate bachelor and conscientious virgin. He believed that carnal passions negatively affect the human brain. True, in his youth he was in love with a certain Miss Storey, a housemate with whom he maintained friendly relations all his life and more than once helped financially.
Sir Isaac was very distracted. He could put a watch in boiling water instead of a chicken egg. Or forget that guests have come to him, and retire in his office in order to complete another scientific work. At the same time, he was the caretaker, and then the manager of the English Mint. I personally brought more than a hundred counterfeiters to clean water.
In April 1698, Newton met with Peter I when he visited England as part of his "Great Embassy".
Fifteen years later, the scientist personally sent the first six printed copies of the second edition of his great book "Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy" to the Russian emperor, in which he formulated three famous laws of mechanics, later named after him, as well as the law of universal gravitation.
Being a fairly wealthy person, Newton tried not to deny anyone financial assistance. He helped both his relatives and his students, many of whom later became prominent scientists.
After the death of his half-sister Anna, he completely took over the care of her children.
The world-famous scientist was an extraordinary modest. He was never in a hurry to inform the public about his discoveries. He kept them "in the table" for 20 years or more. Many of them were "made posthumously." Researchers came across such discoveries in his papers even 300 years after Newton's death.
The scientist himself explained the reluctance to publish by the fact that the growth of his popularity would inevitably lead to an increase in the number of various burdensome acquaintances, and Newton was a rather unsociable person. He had a quarrelsome character. We will not delve into the ins and outs of his many conflicts, but Newton managed to quarrel with a whole galaxy of contemporary scientists: from Leibniz to Robert Hooke.
They say that by the efforts of Newton after the death of the latter, his only portrait was destroyed, so now we do not even know what this outstanding physicist looked like.
Once Newton even managed to quarrel with King James II. In 1703, Newton was elected president of the Royal Society, which he ruled for 24 years, until his death. And this was not a nominal leadership at all. Newton personally attended all meetings of the society.
Twice a week he went to the service at the Mint and once a week to a meeting of the Royal Society.
Newton explained the reason for the rainbow and proposed to divide it into seven composite colors, despite the fact that there are many more colors in the spectrum. In doing so, he proceeded from the analogy with seven notes. The English poet John Keats experienced the greatest irritation about this, because now such a beautiful sight is devoid of the veil of mystery. Newton was fond of alchemy, but did not publish any of his work in this area. It was during his alchemy studies that he almost died to death with mercury.
His statement is well known: "Alchemy does not deal with metals, as the ignorant suppose … The main thing here is the knowledge of God." As a true experimenter, Newton experimented on himself. Once, in order to prove his theory about the nature of vision, he put a probe into his eye and pressed on the bottom of the eyeball. The multicolored circles he saw at the same time convinced him of the truth of his assumptions that our vision is the result of the pressure of light on the retina of the eye. However, scientists rarely spare themselves.
One day, Newton was the victim of a major financial scam, which, with the support of the government, was turned off by the South Sea Trading Company. As a result, he lost £ 20,000, a fabulous sum for those times. Newton predicted the end of the world. According to his calculations, it will happen in 2060. It is then that the second coming of Jesus Christ will come. In 1705, Newton became a knight. Queen Anne, who elevated him to the dignity of knighthood, went against tradition. Newton became the first person to be awarded the knight title for scientific merit.
And this is what Newton himself said about himself, who, according to the inscription on his monument at Trinity College, his alma mater, “surpassed all humanity in reason”: “I don’t know how the world perceives me, but I seem to myself only as a boy, playing on the seashore, who amuses himself with the fact that from time to time he finds a pebble more colorful than others, or a beautiful shell, while the great ocean of truth spreads before me unexplored."