Scientist - Isaac Newton

Although we all know that Isaac Newton was a physicist, mathematician, astronomer and natural philosopher, he also explained Universal gravitation, the laws of motion; he built the first reflective telescope and descovered how to decompose white light into many colours of the visible Spectrum. There is another side to Newton we don't always think of.

Today we recollected 10 facts you might find interesting:

1. ISAAC WASN'T EXPECTED TO LIVE. Yes, that's right. He was born so small that he wasn't expected to survive and could fit into a quart mug(32oz(UK) or 946ml)

2. NEWTON A FARMER? He came from a farming family and started out as a farmer but he was a bad farmer so his uncle persuaded his mother to send him to Trinity College in Cambridge. Aren't you glad of that! What a waste it would have been if he carried on working the land.

3. ISAAC INSPIRED BY AN APPLE. There are a few stories about Isaac and the apple, but it is known that, at least, he was in Woolsthorpe Manor when he was inspired to formulate his theory of Universal gravitation.

4. NEWTON SECRETIVE. He was so secretive about his findings, he rarely published them which led to many quarrels about who deserved the credit for discovering such new found laws.

5. DEEPLY RELIGIOUS. Isaac said that gravity explains the motion of the planets but it didn't explain how they were set in motion and stated:" The most beautiful system of the Sun, planets and comets, could only proceed from the councel and domination of an Intelligent Being. The Supreme God is a Being eternal, inifinte and absolutley perfect".

6. RELIGIOUS BUT...... Newton was deeply religious but he didn't believe in Satan or the Trinity. This might seem to us quite normal in a scientific man but back then it was blasphemous.

7. MAD ABOUT THE BIBLE. Isaac was obsessed with the Bible profesy of the End of the World (Armageddon, Apocalypse, the End of the System of things) and spent much of his life investigating, calculating profetic time and looking for hidden meanings in the Bible. So much so that he wrote more about the Bible than science.

8. NEWTON THE ALCHEMIST. Isaac secretly delved into the world of alchemy. He made many efforts to turn basic metals into gold, this was, of course, illegal. Evidently he kept it secret as it was a felony under an act of 1404.

9. A COUNTERFEITER'S ENEMY. In 1696, Newton became a warden of the London Mint and was given the task of stopping counterfeiting, which was rampant in those days:

He gathered much of that evidence himself, disguised, while he hung out at bars and taverns. Newton was made a justice of the peace and between June 1698 and December 1699 conducted some 200 cross-examinations of witnesses, informers and suspects. Newton won his convictions and in February 1699, he had ten prisoners waiting to be executed. He later ordered all records of his interrogations to be destroyed.

10. A POOR POLITICIAN. Newton a Member of Parliament in 1689 and served for exactly one year. During that time, he said only one sentence during the lengthy proceedings: he asked a nearby usher to close an open, drafty window!