In the footsteps of Isaac Newton

Several sites in England capture the spirit of the famed scientist

Author: By Dan Falk, Globe Correspondent

Date: SUNDAY, February 8, 1998

Page: M4

Section: Travel

If there are fewer monuments to Newton than to Shakespeare or Churchill, it's not for lack of accomplishment. His achievements in science -- his work in optics, his invention of calculus, his theories of motion and gravity -- are unparalleled. Newton single-handedly gave us a new way of thinking about the universe, a view of nature as well-tuned machine, a clockwork governed by strict mathematical laws. The view would dominate science for more than 200 years. And while his mind contemplated the heavens in a search for order and understanding, Newton, in his 85 years, never left the island of Britain.

Though he would spend the latter decades of his life in the capital, a search for the spirit of Isaac Newton can begin only in the countryside of Lincolnshire. Newton was born in a rural manor house in the parish of Colsterworth, south of Grantham. He came into the world on Christmas Day 1642. His father, one of a line of yeoman farmers, died before Newton was born. His mother soon remarried and moved away, leaving young Isaac in the care of his grandmother.

Woolsthorpe Manor still appears much as it did when Newton was growing up. The gray limestone farmhouse is now a museum, run by the National Trust. Engravings of Newton and his contemporaries hang on the walls; a reproduction of his reflecting telescope and a copy of his masterwork, the ``Principia,'' are on display upstairs. From an early age, Newton showed a passion for building mechanical devices and, in the words of a family friend, drawing ``birds, beasts, men, ships, plants, and mathematical figures as he took them, being circles and triangles.'' On the interior walls are a number of charcoal drawings, many of them thought to have been made by the young Newton.

Described as a ``sober, silent, thinking lad,'' Newton lived at Woolsthorpe until age 12, though he would return from time to time in later life. The most notable of those visits was an 18-month stay beginning in 1665, when an outbreak of the plague forced Cambridge University to shut down. On this visit, Newton -- still in his early 20s -- was at the height of his mental prowess. ``In those days I was in the prime of my age for invention,'' he would later recall, ``and minded mathematics and philosophy more than at any time since.'' It was during that stay that Newton mastered the laws of mechanics, laid down the groundwork for calculus, and began his investigation of light and color -- not to mention the insight gleaned from the apple.

In nearby Grantham, tributes to the city's favorite son range from the dignified to the tacky. A massive bronze statue of Newton stands in front of the Guildhall; across the street is the Isaac Newton Shopping Centre. The museum, adjacent to the Guildhall, has displays on Newton's life and work, while the gift shop sells Newton paperweights and keychains.

Newton came to Grantham in 1655 to begin his education at the local grammar school. The old stone schoolhouse, built in 1528, still stands; it's now the library of the prestigious King's School. A plaque on the outer wall, facing Church Street, commemorates the school's most illustrious pupil. By prior arrangement, visitors can inspect the inside of the old schoolhouse, including a stone window ledge bearing the engraved signature of one ``I. Newton.'' We don't know too much about Newton's school days, but we do know about a fight he had with the school bully -- a fight that appears to have had a profound impact on Newton. The bully had apparently kicked him in the stomach, prompting Newton to challenge the boy after class. The fight took place on grounds of St. Wulfram's Church, just across the street from the school. John Conduitt, who would marry Newton's niece years later, gives this account: ``Tho Sir Isaac was not so lusty as his antagonist, he had so much more spirit and resolution that he beat him until he declared he would fight no more, upon which the schoolmaster's son bad him use him as a coward, and rub his nose against the wall, and accordingly Sir Isaac pulled him along by the ears and thrust his face against the side of the church.'' The physical display apparently kick-started Newton's academic performance: Before the skirmish, he was next to the bottom of his class; afterward, he rose to be first in the school.

Initially, Newton's mother wasn't keen on sending him to college. When her second husband died, she was hoping Isaac would return to Woolsthorpe to look after the family estate. But it soon became clear that Newton was singularly unsuited to the task, his mind forever wandering from matters at hand. Finally, his mother accepted that he just wasn't cut out for life on the farm. The servants apparently agreed; they're said to have ``rejoic'd at his departure, declaring he was fit for nothing but the 'Versity.'' Newton went off to Cambridge in summer 1661. The reclusiveness that began in Grantham continued at Trinity College: While a student, and later a fellow of the college, Newton had very few friends. He took little care of his appearance, rarely dined in the Great Hall, and spent long hours alone in his study. It's been suggested that hours of exposure to mercury vapor and other laboratory toxins contributed to his condition. At the very least, Newton had a prickly, paranoid personality; modern historians see it as a borderline psychosis. Compounding Newton's social awkwardness were his unorthodox -- and therefore secret -- religious beliefs. By denying the divinity of Christ, Newton would have been considered a heretic by the authorities at Trinity.

It's not surprising that Newton was hesitant to publish much of his work. Still, word of his ideas inevitably spread. With the recognition of the Royal Society of London -- a body he would eventually lead as president -- Newton soon became Europe's most renowned, and perhaps most feared, man of science.

Trinity College has changed little since Newton's day. Visitors can see where his first-floor rooms were, just north of the great Eastern Gate, facing Trinity Street. In the cloisters west of the quadrangle, Newton is said to have measured the speed of sound by stamping his feet and timing the arrival of the echo. In the antechapel on the north side of the quad is a full-length white marble statue of Newton, by the French sculptor Louis Roubillac. It was described by William Wordsworth as depicting ``Newton with his prism and silent face . . . a mind Forever voyaging through strange seas of thought, alone.'' After more than 35 years at Cambridge, it was time for a change. When Newton was offered the security of a government job in London, he took it. He became warden, and later master, of the Royal Mint, at that time housed within the Tower of London. He lived briefly in one of the Tower residences before settling in the West End. A plaque outside 87 Jermyn St. -- now home to Hackett's menswear -- marks the site where Newton lived from 1697 to 1709. Later, he moved to a home on St. Martin's Street, just below Leicester Square. He would live there until a few months before his death, in 1727. The site is now occupied by the City of Westminster Public Library. In the four corners of the square are busts of the most famous neighborhood residents -- painters William Hogarth and Joshua Reynolds, medical pioneer John Hunter, and, in the southwest corner, Isaac Newton.

Just down the street in the National Portrait Gallery is the best-known painting of Newton, by the court artist Sir Godfrey Kneller (in Room 4). Around the corner (Room 6) are pictures of Newton's contemporaries, Sir Christopher Wren and Sir Edmund Halley, along with Kneller's self-portrait.

In London, Newton's day-to-day work was largely administrative. Science, however, was still very much on his mind. So was establishing his name and his reputation. Toward the end of his life, much of his time would be spent on bitter disputes with fellow scientists, trying to secure recognition for his discoveries. In the end, history has taken Newton's side in most of those disputes. Knighted by Queen Anne in 1705, Newton was, in his final years, Britain's supreme scientist. When Newton died at age 85, he was given a state funeral, and the ultimate British honor -- burial in Westminster Abbey, alongside kings and queens, poets and priests. Above the tomb is an ornate marble sculpture of the reclining Newton, accompanied by a globe, cherubs, and a female figure representing Astronomy, the Queen of the Sciences. The Latin inscription reads, ``Let Mortals rejoice That there has existed such and so great an Ornament to the Human Race.''