A recently rediscovered manuscript confirms what has always been something of a dirty secret about Isaac Newton – that the father of modern physics was also a passionate alchemist who longed to find a “philosopher’s stone” that could turn base metals into gold.
Newton devoted much of his early life to alchemy. The physicist was fascinated by the prospect of transmuting one metal to another, says Rob Iliffe, head of the Newton Project at Imperial College London. Newton believed that metals were the living opposites of trees, growing underground rather than overground.
The 16 pages of notes on alchemy were thought…
