In the aftermath of the English Civil War, the Restoration
overturned England's medieval outlook and a new way of looking
at the world allowed the genius of Isaac Newton (b. 1642) and his
contemporaries to flourish. Newton had a long and eventful life
apart from his scentific discoveries. He was born at the beginnings
of the Civil War, his studies were disrupted by the twin disasters
of the Great Plague and the Fire of London; a brilliant and
enigmatic genius, Newton dabbled in alchemy, wrote over a million
words on the Bible, quarrelled with his contemporaries and spent
his last years as Master of the Royal Mint as well as President of
the Royal Society. This book sets Newton's life and work
against this dramatic intellectual rebirth; among his friends and
contemporaries were Samuel Pepys, the colourful diarist, John
Evelyn, the eccentric antiquarian, the astronomers Edmund Halley
and John Flamsteed, and Christopher Wren, the greatest architect of
his age. They were all instrumental in the founding of the Royal
Society and their aim was nothing less than to examine the whole
field of scientific knowledge.
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