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ameyawarde's review against another edition
4.0
I read this because I had seen Isaac Newton pop up on "Probable Autistics through history" lists and I realized I knew very little about him. Well, there's definitely no question in my mind that he was definitely on the spectrum! For lots of reasons. Normally I complain with biographies like this that they lack much depth, especially around the person's personal life, but here it seems like there wasn't too much to go on. He very much made a point to not be very social, and rebuffed anyone who tried to bring him out into the social world (which is definitely not true of all autistics, many of us are very social, but it's also not at all surprising when you do see it.)
_ash0_'s review against another edition
4.0
Sir Isaac Newton is regarded as a genius. I recently got hold of his biography written by James Gleick, who has also authored Genius and Chaos. I always wanted to know more about Newton’s life. Having known Einstein’s biography, I was curious to know how Newton’s life was. “Newton was not a pleasant man“, is a statement about him that always comes to my mind, after having read Stephen Hawking’s review about Isaac Newton. He had too many adversaries and never had any friends. He was very lonely in his life ever since he was born. He was fatherless and his mother never wanted him. He neither got married nor did he ever involve in any relationship with any woman. His life is really intriguing.
After knowing such less facts about his life, I always wanted to read more about his life. This book is very small and gives a brief overview of Newton’s life. It is not very technical with too many details. I found it little disappointing since it is written in a layman language, helpful for non-science students. There is no mathematics at all in it, which is what I expected to find. But still it mentions all the concepts in Mathematics that Newton came up with, starting with Differential and Integral calculus to Binomial theorems, Ellipses, curves, centre of curvature, radius of curvature, cycloid etc. Even though I knew about some of his works, I never knew that Newton has contributed so much to Science and Mathematics, until I read the book. I am really in awe of this man.
He truly is a genius. I cannot think of another scientist who can be of match to him. No wonder he was the first scientist to receive Knighthood. It also talks about all the arguments that Newton got involved into. The famous one with Leibniz over calculus, the hatredness that Hooke and he had for each other. It also speaks of how he took Flamsteed’s findings and published them even though Flamsteed did not approve of it. It also talks about Newton’s interests in alchemy and his work on element Mercury, which I did not have much idea about. It also talks about Newton’s interest in Biblical matters. His contributions to time, space and motion, his findings on planetary motion, movement of the moon, tides, comets are commendable. He invented the reflecting telescope (one of which I own).
Now that gravity is like a matter of common sense these days, it is interesting to know what people felt back then. How people thought it was something supernatural or magical and how they condemned Newton for that. I loved the lines which Newton had written and the author has quoted where he says that he did not care about what others thought and that he was satisfied that it had a mathematical backing And like I had read earlier that the apple falling on the head did not lead him to find out gravity, the author confirms this theory saying Newton never mentioned that in any of his notebooks.
One of the most interesting facts about Newton that I learned was that Newton never did any kind of research to get acclaim. He worked on problems and came up with solutions only for “himself”. He always wanted to learn the ways of nature and it was his thirst for knowledge that made him explore more. Another interesting fact about him was that even though he had done lot of work on light and color, only after others forced him, he published his work after thirty years. He never published his findings, he liked to keep them to himself. The author says a lot about Newton’s involvement with Royal society and how he ended up becoming the president of it later on.
What I liked in the book were the quotes, statements, figures drawn/written by Newton himself that the author has quoted. It feels good to read what Newton had written in letters to other scientists or the notes that he took in his book about his findings. Because of the presence of such authentic writings, you tend to believe in everything the author says about Newton. A thorough research about his life has been done by James Gleick and he needs to be praised for that.
However not much light has been cast on some of the important phases of Newton’s life. He had a nervous breakdown at the age of fifty or so and I really wanted to know more about how he recovered from it, but it has been very briefly mentioned. Even though the author has mentioned lines from letters that Newton wrote to other scientists, it still felt incomplete.
Overall: It is a great book if you want to know more about Newton’s life. A very interesting read and because of its size, does not take much time to complete it. I would give this book 4/5.
After knowing such less facts about his life, I always wanted to read more about his life. This book is very small and gives a brief overview of Newton’s life. It is not very technical with too many details. I found it little disappointing since it is written in a layman language, helpful for non-science students. There is no mathematics at all in it, which is what I expected to find. But still it mentions all the concepts in Mathematics that Newton came up with, starting with Differential and Integral calculus to Binomial theorems, Ellipses, curves, centre of curvature, radius of curvature, cycloid etc. Even though I knew about some of his works, I never knew that Newton has contributed so much to Science and Mathematics, until I read the book. I am really in awe of this man.
He truly is a genius. I cannot think of another scientist who can be of match to him. No wonder he was the first scientist to receive Knighthood. It also talks about all the arguments that Newton got involved into. The famous one with Leibniz over calculus, the hatredness that Hooke and he had for each other. It also speaks of how he took Flamsteed’s findings and published them even though Flamsteed did not approve of it. It also talks about Newton’s interests in alchemy and his work on element Mercury, which I did not have much idea about. It also talks about Newton’s interest in Biblical matters. His contributions to time, space and motion, his findings on planetary motion, movement of the moon, tides, comets are commendable. He invented the reflecting telescope (one of which I own).
Now that gravity is like a matter of common sense these days, it is interesting to know what people felt back then. How people thought it was something supernatural or magical and how they condemned Newton for that. I loved the lines which Newton had written and the author has quoted where he says that he did not care about what others thought and that he was satisfied that it had a mathematical backing And like I had read earlier that the apple falling on the head did not lead him to find out gravity, the author confirms this theory saying Newton never mentioned that in any of his notebooks.
One of the most interesting facts about Newton that I learned was that Newton never did any kind of research to get acclaim. He worked on problems and came up with solutions only for “himself”. He always wanted to learn the ways of nature and it was his thirst for knowledge that made him explore more. Another interesting fact about him was that even though he had done lot of work on light and color, only after others forced him, he published his work after thirty years. He never published his findings, he liked to keep them to himself. The author says a lot about Newton’s involvement with Royal society and how he ended up becoming the president of it later on.
What I liked in the book were the quotes, statements, figures drawn/written by Newton himself that the author has quoted. It feels good to read what Newton had written in letters to other scientists or the notes that he took in his book about his findings. Because of the presence of such authentic writings, you tend to believe in everything the author says about Newton. A thorough research about his life has been done by James Gleick and he needs to be praised for that.
However not much light has been cast on some of the important phases of Newton’s life. He had a nervous breakdown at the age of fifty or so and I really wanted to know more about how he recovered from it, but it has been very briefly mentioned. Even though the author has mentioned lines from letters that Newton wrote to other scientists, it still felt incomplete.
Overall: It is a great book if you want to know more about Newton’s life. A very interesting read and because of its size, does not take much time to complete it. I would give this book 4/5.
wescovington's review against another edition
3.0
A short biography by Gleick on Newton. He spends much of his time on Newton's personality quirks (of which there were many) and sometimes makes it look like the science was being driven by the unusual figure of Newton. Overall, not a bad introduction to Newton.
ketchikrista's review against another edition
4.0
More on a science side than a personal side. However, it is fascinating for me to see how the major men of science in those days connected. You’ll see a lot of key players in this book.
clarks_dad's review against another edition
3.0
Perhaps I'm predisposed, keeping figures like Einstein and Feynman in mind, to the idea that great minds are inherently liberal. Not in politics necessarily, but in personality. It's hard to imagine someone of the intellectual stature of the inventor of the calculus and modern mechanics not being magnanimous, generous, giving and wanting to share his success with the world; being encouraging to fellows pursuing difficult questions and charitable in his political stances toward the accumulation and practice of new scientific knowledge. Gleick's cutting biography of Newton has disabused me of this notion.
Revealed through Mr. Newton's own personal correspondence and notes comes to light a figure that is craven, withdrawn, and as petty and vindictive as he was absolutely, stunningly, incomprehensibly brilliant. His mind and his achievements put into perspective what we might call "genius" by modern standards and force us to see how short that term falls. Around his work is built the edifice of modern science, a three hundred year quest formulated and enabled by the "tools" Newton created mostly in seclusion during the plague years 1665-1666 from his family home in Woolsthorpe. A more brooding significant historical figure can hardly be imagined, except perhaps for some of the later histories and accounts of the life of Lincoln.
I'd read some spurious anecdotes about Newton's proclivities form other historians of science, mainly Bill Bryson in his Brief History of Nearly Everything that created some cracks in the lustrous portrait we've painted of the legend since the time of his death, but Gleick's account delves much further to reveal just how unstable and truly friendless Newton was. Not that he was without admirers, though perhaps he accumulated those in far greater numbers after he was dead and not around to harangue, cajole, manipulate and condescend to them any more. He spent thirty-five years at Cambridge, most of them as the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics and in the entire time there, produced not a single friend. He was introspective and fearful of the judgment of others to the point of hysteria at times, and his writings, painstakingly collected and organized by Gleick reveal it.
Gleick is a phenomenal historian of science in that he is perfectly comfortable with the ideas he is trying to convey as well as the historical impact of the ideas themselves. His prose fluctuates from the intimidatingly terse, in a Cormac McCarthy style of recounting, to the lofty and eloquent, elevating the figures of his narrative and their achievements to awe-inspring status. It's at once revelatory and myth-making - a balance of the real and pragmatic and the idyllic and I like it a lot. That being said, I think that the book's narrative also fluctuates between really captivating anecdotes and analysis to pages of quotations from Newton or his contemporaries that attempt to let them tell the story themselves with little analysis in between on the historical import of such events or happenings.
Having read The Information first, I can clearly see this book as a period of gestation for those later themes and ideas, particularly the role that information and it's effective communication was going to have on the technological and scientific developments that were to come. Of particular interest to Gleick again in this work is symbology - the connection between words, symbols and ideas and the literal things they represent. It's difficult to imagine talking about things like Newton's laws of mechanics without the proper terminology, which he had to invent, or re-appropriate from their common usage. Words like force, mass, gravity, all had to be redefined to fit into a new paradigm of motion broken free from the millennia long grip of Aristotelean philosophy. But whereas The Information had a unifying theme, this book does not. Granted, it is biography, the objective of which is to tell a life story. Perhaps it's a wonderful conceit that Gleick avoids making judgments on Newton and lets the man speak for himself across the centuries, but at the same time, I was hoping for more. What do we make of Newton? What place does he hold in history? Is he a fundamental figure that defines the beginning of the modern era in reason, science and mathematics? Was he the last of a line of animists who believed in magic and superstition (he was a devoted and secretive alchemist most of his life as well)? Was he a bridge between? The reader is left free to interpret his life on its own, but as such it feels more like an encyclopedic entry, or a tome of primary source material than an historical analysis.
Think this one is about three and a half stars for me, but I'll choose to be conservative and round down. I guess that makes it 3.4999. Still, a great book if all you know about Newton is what your math or physics teacher told you about in passing and the amount of work put in to the research for this book is no laughing matter at all. Gleick's bibliography and notes run almost seventy pages. He knows his stuff and he knows how to organize it and he's definitely cemented himself in my opinion is the finest science historian and commentator of the present era, a true successor to people like Thomas Khun.
Revealed through Mr. Newton's own personal correspondence and notes comes to light a figure that is craven, withdrawn, and as petty and vindictive as he was absolutely, stunningly, incomprehensibly brilliant. His mind and his achievements put into perspective what we might call "genius" by modern standards and force us to see how short that term falls. Around his work is built the edifice of modern science, a three hundred year quest formulated and enabled by the "tools" Newton created mostly in seclusion during the plague years 1665-1666 from his family home in Woolsthorpe. A more brooding significant historical figure can hardly be imagined, except perhaps for some of the later histories and accounts of the life of Lincoln.
I'd read some spurious anecdotes about Newton's proclivities form other historians of science, mainly Bill Bryson in his Brief History of Nearly Everything that created some cracks in the lustrous portrait we've painted of the legend since the time of his death, but Gleick's account delves much further to reveal just how unstable and truly friendless Newton was. Not that he was without admirers, though perhaps he accumulated those in far greater numbers after he was dead and not around to harangue, cajole, manipulate and condescend to them any more. He spent thirty-five years at Cambridge, most of them as the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics and in the entire time there, produced not a single friend. He was introspective and fearful of the judgment of others to the point of hysteria at times, and his writings, painstakingly collected and organized by Gleick reveal it.
Gleick is a phenomenal historian of science in that he is perfectly comfortable with the ideas he is trying to convey as well as the historical impact of the ideas themselves. His prose fluctuates from the intimidatingly terse, in a Cormac McCarthy style of recounting, to the lofty and eloquent, elevating the figures of his narrative and their achievements to awe-inspring status. It's at once revelatory and myth-making - a balance of the real and pragmatic and the idyllic and I like it a lot. That being said, I think that the book's narrative also fluctuates between really captivating anecdotes and analysis to pages of quotations from Newton or his contemporaries that attempt to let them tell the story themselves with little analysis in between on the historical import of such events or happenings.
Having read The Information first, I can clearly see this book as a period of gestation for those later themes and ideas, particularly the role that information and it's effective communication was going to have on the technological and scientific developments that were to come. Of particular interest to Gleick again in this work is symbology - the connection between words, symbols and ideas and the literal things they represent. It's difficult to imagine talking about things like Newton's laws of mechanics without the proper terminology, which he had to invent, or re-appropriate from their common usage. Words like force, mass, gravity, all had to be redefined to fit into a new paradigm of motion broken free from the millennia long grip of Aristotelean philosophy. But whereas The Information had a unifying theme, this book does not. Granted, it is biography, the objective of which is to tell a life story. Perhaps it's a wonderful conceit that Gleick avoids making judgments on Newton and lets the man speak for himself across the centuries, but at the same time, I was hoping for more. What do we make of Newton? What place does he hold in history? Is he a fundamental figure that defines the beginning of the modern era in reason, science and mathematics? Was he the last of a line of animists who believed in magic and superstition (he was a devoted and secretive alchemist most of his life as well)? Was he a bridge between? The reader is left free to interpret his life on its own, but as such it feels more like an encyclopedic entry, or a tome of primary source material than an historical analysis.
Think this one is about three and a half stars for me, but I'll choose to be conservative and round down. I guess that makes it 3.4999. Still, a great book if all you know about Newton is what your math or physics teacher told you about in passing and the amount of work put in to the research for this book is no laughing matter at all. Gleick's bibliography and notes run almost seventy pages. He knows his stuff and he knows how to organize it and he's definitely cemented himself in my opinion is the finest science historian and commentator of the present era, a true successor to people like Thomas Khun.
adamrshields's review against another edition
2.0
Short review: I probably should have put more effort into this. But I read half and then then it was due back at the library. I was not into the book enough to try and wait in line to check it out again.
Full review at http://bookwi.se/newton-gleick/
Full review at http://bookwi.se/newton-gleick/
musicdeepdive's review against another edition
3.25
A starter bio, as others have mentioned. To be fair, it's hard to say if Newton could really be nailed down any more firmly than this, since his personality was so secretive and low-key.