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Nova (TV series documentary)

Newton's Dark Secrets (#33.6) 
 
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0662639/

Original PBS Broadcast Date: November 15, 2005   
 
He was the greatest scientist of his day, perhaps of all time. But while Isaac Newton was busy discovering the universal law of gravitation, he was also searching out hidden meanings in the Bible and pursuing the covert art of alchemy. In this program, NOVA explores the strange and complex mind of Isaac Newton.

Using docudrama scenes starring Scott Handy (Masterpiece Theatre's Henry VIII) as Newton, this film recreates the unique climate of late 17th-century England, where a newfound fascination with science and mathematics coexisted with extreme views on religious doctrine. Newton shared both obsessions.

The program also covers Newton's most important discoveries in mathematics, physics, and optics. And it follows a detailed recreation of one of Newton's little-known alchemical experiments, assembled by Bill Newman, Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at Indiana University, who spent years deciphering Newton's secret coded recipes (see Newton's Alchemy).

Most people know of Newton as the father of modern science, but his tireless genius knew no bounds. A devout Christian, his meticulous study of the scriptures led him to conclude that both Catholicism and the Anglican Church of England were based on dangerous heresies. Prudently, he kept these opinions to himself.

Oddly enough, he often kept his remarkable scientific discoveries to himself as well. While a student at Cambridge University in the 1660s, he had to return home to escape an outbreak of the plague. Working largely from this country setting, he invented the branch of mathematics we now call calculus and began asking fundamental questions about the nature of force and motion that would later lead him to the universal law of gravitation. At the time, he published nothing on these breakthroughs. (For more on Newton's extraordinary scientific accomplishments, see His Legacy.)

Returning to full-time studies at Cambridge after the epidemic, he worked his way up to an appointment as the prestigious Lucasian professor of mathematics, a position now held by the noted physicist Stephen Hawking. Newton's mathematics lectures were so notoriously difficult that few, if any, students attended them. He also continued his optical experiments, which showed that white light is a mixture of all the colors of the rainbow, rather than being a pure form of light as was generally believed at that time. 

In 1936 a huge cache of Newton's papers turned up that revealed his lifelong passion for alchemy. Though today alchemy is classed with magic and pseudoscience, in the 17th century it was a respected form of natural inquiry that was methodically laying the foundation for modern chemistry.

But the crowning achievement of Newton's career was his Principia Mathematica, an astonishing book that uses concepts of mass, force, motion, and gravity to explain everything from falling apples to orbiting planets. The mammoth work was sparked by a simple question from Newton's friend Edmond Halley, discoverer of the periodic nature of the comet that bears his name. Halley merely wanted to know the shape of a planet's orbit around the sun (see Birth of a Masterpiece).

NOVA also delves into Newton's religious studies, which he pursued with his characteristic zeal for finding unseen connections. One fixation was dating the Apocalypse based on clues in the Bible. It was recently announced that, according to Newton, the date for all the turmoil predicted in the book of Revelation is in our own century: 2060.

Whether it was in physics, alchemy, or theology, Newton was ceaselessly "looking for ultimate answers to questions," says Indiana University historian Gale Christianson.