The mastermind of Sir Isaac Newton yields results just as brilliant when studying Bible prophecy as when he turned his attention to the physical universe! There is in this book a consistency of interpretation in all the details of the prophecies of Daniel and of Revelation that I have not seen in any of the works of modern-day scholars. Isaac Newton seems to be completely true to the message of the Bible when providing his own thoughts on the Antichrist, the Beast, the Woman called "Babylon", and the "Great Tribulation". The integrity of Newton's scholarship and skills of exegesis give the reader a distinct impression that, unlike most writers on end-times prophecy today, when faced with a detail of interpretation that conflicted with his existing views, Newton would have gladly given up his prejudices in exchange for something better: the Truth. He presents an excellent example--perhaps the best I have read--of what is known as Premillennial Historicism. This is essentially the same view held by H. Grattan Guinness, E.B. Elliott, Matthew Henry, and Charles Spurgeon. In my opinion every pastor or teacher who preaches or teaches on the subject of the Last Things should have a copy of "Observations..." on his or her desk.

I read this book to my five and nine year old and they both loved it. A well written story that is told from Newton's early childhood and on to his adult years in a way that will help young readers remember the facts of his life.

to rem

Newton's "Principia" was the crowning achievement of 17th Century Natural Philosophy, bringing together the works of great thinkers like Galileo and Johanes Kepler. This great work supplied the momentum for the Scientific Revolution and dominated physics for over 200 years. Although it was later demonstrated to have limitations at the atomic level, the principles of Newtonian physics are still applicable to much of our everyday lives. The casual reader may find this book difficult to work through, however. Newton's three laws of motion are not stated in the language that is used in modern introductory physics texts. A good companion to this book is "Feynman's Lost Lecture" in which Richard Feyman demonstrates planetary motion using the same geometric techniques employed by Isaac Newton, but in a more clear, modern style.

This book breathes life into the very complex figure who is a progenitor of Science, and to an extent, Western civilization as we know them today. From Newton's correspondence and the memoirs of people who knew him, Christianson tells the story of the quiet child who revolutionized theories of light and mechanics, invented calculus (or did he? read!), served brilliantly as Master of the Mint, and presided over the Royal Society while privately holding heretical views and practicing alchemy. I got a great sense of the interrelatedness of the works of Newton and his contemporaries such that he seems neither untouchable and divine nor merely "in the right place at the right time", fashionable traps for biography. His interaction with many other contemporaries, such as Halley, Leibniz, and (Johann) Bernoulli were a reality check for my notions of genteel integrity among the lights of the age.

This is the first work of history and biography I've read in a long time. I'm now inspired to find more reading of this caliber. If only my formal education in history could have been this engaging!

Macmillan, please print this again so I can have my own copy!

Every one has heard of Isaac Newton. His laws of motion, how an apple fell on his head to help him understand gravity, etc. Those who go on to college to study science or engineering hear more of his work in optics, calculus, and a myriad other fields. When you understand how his work is at the very foundations of modern science, you begin to appreciate his genius.

This book by Gale E. Christianson is based on about 4 millions words (approximately 8000 pages on a standard 8 inches by 11.5 inches paper) written by Newton himself. The author succeeds in presenting everything that is known about Newton in less than 600 pages. Throughout the book, considerable amount of time is spent in outlining the external environment (political, religious, social and scientific) in England to help the reader understand Newton's life better.

The book starts off with Newton's ancestry and his own very difficult birth (prematurely born). His life is traced all the way to his education at Trinity College (University of Cambridge) and beyond as a Professor of Mathematics. The controversy regarding who is the originator of Calculus (Leibniz being the contender) is addressed in great detail. Everything you may want to learn about the origins of 'Principia Mathematica' is also covered in this book. Of course, there is no substitute for reading a copy of the original 'Principia Mathematica' itself if you are interested in exactly what it comprised.

I have yet to finish reading the entire book and it has been about 10 years since I purchased my copy. I skipped a few chapters when I first read the book and I have never been able to find the time to go back and fill in the blanks. The 600 pages are quite daunting to read yet thoroughly enjoyable if you can relate to his life in any way. Even otherwise, the life of one of the greatest abstract thinkers of all times is absolutely fascinating. What makes the book difficult to read is not the complex mathematics or physics (there is none of that in this book) but the pages and pages devoted to painting a picture of life in England at that time. There is so much information that you also need to find British History interesting in order to appreciate the entire book.

If you are deeply interested in Physics or Mathematics, you will enjoy this book thoroughly. Otherwise, it will make a good addition to your biography collection. The effort that the author spent on putting this book together is absolutely monumental. I plan on keeping this as part of my library collection and someday pass it on to my progeny. I hope you find it as enjoyable a book to read as I did.

Although not very detailed on the scientific aspects of Newton's work, this biography places him very well in his historic period, where we find a tadpole spectacle-between two worlds--of an age in transition, and the arch-innovator, shaking the foundations. That said, and the tale makes it clear, Newton was still very much a man of another age, if not another world, and we can also forget his discretion towards what he had achieved, never mistaking it for a complete metaphysical system. The theologian competes with the tinkerer turned blazingly sharp intuiter of the method of fluxions. The issue is important because the monumental genius of his deed tends to induce imitation in the sciences to come, but this never suceeds, for a reason Newton might have found obvious as he expended a majority of his labors poring over theological and alchemical treatises. I shan't further, as is my wont, crack jokes about 'mad scientists'. Newton was the real McCoy, and so much more compellingly fascinating than the caricature. We might learn his system of the world, but never grasp the 'system' of his mind, where sanity and madness integrate as a mystery. The depiction in the book of the world of Newton's England, Cambridge, and in the period of a classic political passage, leaves only wonder at the pinnacle of accomplishment starting from such rough-scrabble beginnings.

The book, Isaac Newton and the Scientific Revoultion, was a good book beacause it went futher than the inventions and into Isaac Newton, the man. The book showed his public and private fueds with rival scientists. The books also shows his emotions; lots of resenment and hate, love of the unknown, and joy of experinicng life to the fullest. The only bad part of the book was it was to fast; it didn't show enough of the discoverery, it raced along to show what happened to Newton after the discovery like his fame and how it destroyed his rivals. But in the end you feel like you knew Newton and lived in the Scientiic revolution.

This is not just a great biography'it's one of the best-written science books around for young people. Christianson has sifted through the historical documents and accounts of Newton to paint a convincing and intelligent picture of the complex and at times irascible genius. Even more remarkable, the biographical portrait he presents is a compelling story. It begins with a beheading'that of Charles I'and ends with the poetic image of visitors to Newton's gravesite pausing "in silent tribute to the sacred permanence of the dead." The author demonstrates a remarkable sense of Newton and his times. For example, while many other biographers struggle to explain his experiments in alchemy, Christianson puts them in context of the great scientist trying to unravel the mysteries of the atomic world with the best tools available to him. The narrative also shows how Newton changed as he grew older: from a young, intense, reclusive academic to a living legend justifiably vain about his reputation. Reproductions of documents, Newton's sketches, and paintings of well-known figures illustrate this fine book

I have never read a biography quite as good as this. This book has some of the best descriptions of Newton that I've ever heard: "Like Leonardo da Vinci and Benjamin Franklin, Isaac Newton was not just an aimless childhood tinkerer, but a tinkerer playing with ideas and mechanisms." It has so many interesting details about his life, such as the jumping contest at school, or the many different clocks that he made. This book made me realize that Newton wasn't just a great scientist, but a political figure as well, with a seat in Parliment, head of the Royal Society, and Director of the Mint. If it is possible, Cristianson would be my nominee for the Pulitzer Prize.

Dark Matter: The Private Life of Sir Isaac Newton written by Philip Kerr is a brilliant book filled with intrigue and mystery. This is a crime novel set in 1696 England.

When reading this book I could see Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson trying to solve this case of counterfeitting or Umberto Eco and his "Name of the Rose" popped into my head as I began reading into the book. This is a book of many levels but a crime-mystery is the best sobiquet I can think of for the sonorous prose.

With risk of giving away the story the book has Sir Isaac Newton as the Warden of Royal Mint and he is given the services of young Christopher Ellis as the track down counterfeiters that are trying to weaken a war-weakened economy. But, counterfeiting is only part of the problem as deaths start to occur and the plot thickens. Now, the echelons of power and nobility are suspect, collapse of the economay is now eminent.

You will be engrossed in this book till the end as the author takes you on a history tour of England, places you have never been before... truly an innovatively conveyed thriller.

Kerr works very hard to write really authentic historical thrillers and this one is certainly no exception. DM reeks of period flavor, and biographical detail and is probably the best, most evocative mystery novel I have read since Eco's Name of the Rose. The portrait of Newton as a kind of early Sherlock Holmes is very persuasive; I learned more history from reading this book than anything I read in school. But it is with Newton's Watson-like assistant, Ellis, where the novel really satisfies. I can't recommend this book too highly.

History, rather than the future seems to be where Kerr feels at his most comfortable and demonstrates himself a cut above most thriller and mystery writers. I wasn't a big fan of his novel The 2nd Angel. But his Bernie Gunther series of novels, collected as Berlin Noir, are something else again. I can't begin to remember how many people recommended that book to me, and I have never understood why he has never written another. That aside, this book shows Kerr on his best form since Berlin Noir. At once reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes and The Name of the Rose, I enjoyed this novel enormously. It is highly intelligent without being pretentious and extremely readable without ever being predictable. Above all it is informative as well as being entertaining. I am now going to buy a biography of Sir Isaac Newton and find out more about England's greatest scientist. Full marks to Kerr for a really clever idea.

I only have the earlier reviewers to go on, but if this book claims that Newton only turned to alchemy and scriptural exegesis after his nervous breakdown, then that part of the book must also be read as fiction.

Read Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs' scholarly analysis in her book "Foundations of Newton's Alchemy" to see just how strongly the evidence supports the conclusion that he simultaneously investigated the Bible, arcane alchemical claims, optics, metallurgy, astronomy _and_ mathematics for over 30 years, then suppressed everything but the mathematical physics when he wrote his "Principia". In this case, biography truly is stranger than fiction.

"The Newton Letter" is a mere eighty-one pages, a good thing since this imaginative and masterfully written, but often cryptic, novel needs to be read at least twice (if not three times) to fully appreciate John Banville's enigmatic, introspective tale.

Written in the first person, the nameless, fiftyish male narrator of "The Newton Letter" is an historian who has spent seven years writing a book about Sir Isaac Newton. Seeking a sanctuary to finish his work, he rents a small cottage at an estate in southern Ireland known as Fern House, "a big gloomy pile with ivy and peeling walls and a smashed fanlight over the door, the kind of place where you picture a mad stepdaughter locked up in the attic." It is a setting, and a story, heavy with gothic overtones.

In his words, "the book was as good as done, I had only to gather up a few loose ends and write the conclusion-but in those first few weeks at Ferns something started to go wrong . . . I was concentrating, with morbid fascination, on the chapter I had devoted to [Newton's] breakdown and those two letters [Newton had written] to Locke."

He becomes obsessed, however, not only with Newton's two letters to John Locke, but also with the inhabitants of Fern House: Edward, the often drunk master of the house; Charlotte, his wife, a tall, middle-aged woman with an abstracted air and a penchant for gardening; Ottilie, the big, blonde, twenty-four year old niece of Charlotte; and Michael, the adopted son of Edward and Charlotte.

The narrator soon becomes entangled with Ottilie in a mysterious way when she appears at his door. "It's strange to be offered, without conditions, a body you don't really want." But what, exactly, is the nature of his relationship with Ottilie? When he embraces her, he feels "the soft shock of being suddenly, utterly inhabited." In the pervasive aura of the gothic, the reader wonders exactly what is happening, for, as the narrator enigmatically relates in the middle of the novel while making love to Ottilie, "how should I tell her that she was no longer the woman I was holding in my arms?" It is a strange statement, presumably intended to refer to the fact that the narrator's true obsession is with the older, aloof Charlotte, even as he cavorts with Ottilie. The mystery is fed by the narrator's conclusion, where he speaks of brooding on certain words, "succubus for instance." It suggests, in short, a kind of surreal narrative imagining, where the realism of the narrator's struggle with his book on Newton is confounded by the incursion of the strange, enigmatic and, at times, dreamlike inhabitants of Fern House.

"The Newton Letter" is a powerful, intricate and allusive work of imagination that demands the reader's careful and thoughtful attention. Banville shows, with remarkable skillfulness, how the narrator's imagined history of the inhabitants of Fern House is undermined by successive, incremental discoveries of the reality of their lives. At the same time, Banville draws on the gothic to lend his tale an imaginative element that is both a counterpoint to the real lives at Fern House and a touchstone to the enigma of the Newton letters. Like great works of literature, "The Newton Letter" is an ambiguous text open to many interpretations, the writing an elliptical treasure that allows the reader's imagination to run free in the interstices of Banville's creative field.

I had borrowed this book from the library a long long time ago and I somehow happened to pick it up after like 3 books and read it in a span of two days! This was the first time I was venturing to read a Banville and thank god, I did decide to pick it up. A short novella - around 97 pages and riveting!

This book is a letter written by the narrator - who is nameless and has entered the Irish countryside to finish his book on Newton only to discover and re-discover his own denied passions and emotions. His cottage is situated in a place called Fern house where he encounters a strange lot of people - Edward, Charlotte, Edward's Sister Diana and her husband Tom, Ottilie - Charlotte's so-called niece and little Michael. As the narrator gets engrossed in their lives, he loses focus of the book, only to drown it. This is a classic juxtaposition of how Newton one fine day gave up on science and took to alchemy.

This book is one of a kind and when I say this, I really mean it. Banville conjures a mystery, a love story, a discovery sometimes and beauty of language so rare these days in most novels - and where else can one find such a combination and being told in 97 pages!! Wow!!

This book was assigned reading for an advanced course in engineering physics. It is more of a history book, cartoon style, than a serious book on the physics of motion and gravity as observed by Galileo and Newton. I found the presentations on important topics to be painfully vague. You may get a few soundbites from this book, but thats about it.

The treatment of Galileo could have been more accurate and less crude, but I really like this book. Excellent presentation of both history and ideas in the context of history. I gave a copy to my wife, and also require my students to read it when I teach both elementary and modern physics (relativity).

Dobbs and Jacob provide a very good introduction to the history of science at a high school level. This is a rare thing in an academic discipline that, like many others, increasingly limits its audience to other specialists in the field. The chapters are well written and the book avoids being an excessively laudatory biography, despite its focus on one of the "Great Men" of science. If the book has one shortcoming it is that the chapters do not fit together well to form a coherent whole. It shows some of the roughness indicative of a cooperative work.

What a terrific introduction to the origins of modern science! The authors have provided a balanced, lucid and engaging treatment of a pivotal topic in modern science and culture. The book falls into two parts. The first section provides a thumbnail sketch of Newton's life and scientific achievements, written with a talent for abbreviated grace. The second section shifts to the multifaceted impact of Newton's achievement and surveys the origins of both the Enlightenment and the First Industrial Revolution with panache. The authors, top scholars in their fields, have written an excellent, short book on a big subject for students and the general reader. It's just what we need but rarely get.

I read up to Prop 6 and could not quite carry on. His language is not easy to understand. I hope someone will publish a Dictionary of it. Anyway, his proof of Kepler's 2nd theorem is clever, and he is very rigorous mathematically for his time. ...

I bought this book not for the purpose of learning Classical Mechanics from it, but for the scientific curiosity of learning how the great Isaac Newton presented his revolutionary scientific ideas to the world. Of course, it is difficult to read. This is an old translation of a book written in Latin more than 300 years ago!

This book is a jewel. Just like the original works of Einstein, Maxwell, Heisenberg, Schroedinger and all those giants. The person buying this book should not expect to find a clear didactic textbook when originally it was not written for the layman, but for the expert scientific community of its time. Buy this book, sit back, scan through it, and enjoy a true piece of history.