Isaac Newton: Secrets of the Universe (The True Story of Isaac Newton) (Historical Biographies of Famous People);

Isaac Newton is one of the chief architects of our world, the man whose life marked the definitive transition from the Dark Ages to the modern scientific era. His laws of motion and gravity laid the foundations for the entire discipline of physics, and his work on optics, color, thermodynamics, and the speed of sound greatly advanced their respective fields. Along the way, he co-invented calculus and built the first useful reflecting telescope.

Yet this towering genius was also all too human, prone to lashing out at rivals, paranoia, and even nervous breakdowns. He secretly worked with alchemy and the occult even as his public experiments swept away the mysticism of the medieval age. In this compact, highly readable biography, Alexander Kennedy chronicles Newton in all his paradoxical glory: his insights along with his superstitions, his stinginess and cruelty along with his great gifts to the human race. As Kennedy describes Newton’s penetrating experiments into the physical world, the reader comes to understand why Alexander Pope once wrote of this Father of Modern Science: “Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night/ God said, ‘Let Newton be!’ and all was light...”

"I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.” - Isaac Newton

Buy Now to Discover:

• The wager that led to the most important book in scientific history.
• Concise, layman’s explanations of Newton’s scientific breakthroughs.
• How the Great Plague of 1665 contributed to the theory of universal gravitation.
• The truth behind Newton’s troubled personal life and nervous breakdowns.
• Newton’s obsessive search for the alchemical “philosopher’s stone.”
• Newton’s friendship with pioneering astronomer Edmond Halley.
• The lasting legacy of Newton’s writings.