Merry Newtonmas

[mmarotta]

Born on Christmas Day 1642, Sir Isaac Newton was Master and Warden of the British Royal Mint for 30 years, 1696-1727.  You can find him on the UK one-pound note of the early 1980s.  Middlesex "Conder" tokens carry his image, also. 

In early life he practiced alchemy.  (John Maynard Keynes called him "the last sorcerer."  That is the title of the 1997 biography by Michael White.)  He brought his skill with applied chemistry to the Mint, to test and validate the assays of gold plate for coinage.  He also presaged the modern age by performing time-and-motion studies to find the optimal production speeds.  (Before this, men worked as fast as they could, quickly wearing themselves out and suffering needless injuries.  Newton set the pace at 55 coins a minute.) 

Newton's friends included John Locke and Sir Christopher Wren.  When he needed help at the a branch Mint, he enlisted Edmund Halley.  But he made enemies even more easily.  His conflict with Leibnitz is a legend.  He also quarreled with Astronomer Royal John Flamsteed.  His famous quote "If I have seen farther than most men, it is because I stood on the shoulders of giants" was actually an insult to Robert Hooke who was five feet tall and who perhaps rightfully claimed first discovery of some of Newton's work in physics. 

Any one of Newton's accomplishments would have left a historical record.  He invented calculus.  He established three basic laws of motion and the inverse-square law of gravity. He proved Kepler's Laws.  He also offered a new proof of the Binomial Theorem (also called "Pascal's Triangle").  He invented the reflecting telescope.  He explained why white light is comprised of colors.  He was President of the Royal Society.  He represented Cambridge at Parliament. As Master and Warden of the British Royal Mint, he rescued Britain's economy from imminent disaster and replaced a corrupt and ineffective medieval sinecure with a modern management.