Cultural depictions of Isaac Newton
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The achievements of physicist and mathematician Isaac Newton have been immortalised in popular culture. Almost everyone is familiar with the story of Newton's apple. English poet Alexander Pope was moved by Newton's accomplishments to write the famous epitaph:
Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night;
God said "Let Newton be" and all was light.
Newton has also featured in conspiracy theories and pop fiction. One example receiving recent attention is Newton's alleged participation in the Priory of Sion as "Grand Master" from 1691–1727, in documents that some have dismissed as a hoax concocted by Pierre Plantard. These documents were incorporated into the 1982 book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, which was later one of the primary source books for the bestselling 2003 Dan Brown novel The Da Vinci Code. Newton is a major character in The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson, which depicts his alchemical studies, his rivalry with Leibniz and his battle with the counterfeiters.
In Gregory Keyes' alternate history book, Newton's Cannon, Sir Isaac Newton is portrayed as an alchemist rather than a physicist. There is a complex plot involving characters such as Benjamin Franklin and King Louis XIV of France. The story mainly takes place in an alternate early eighteenth century. Newton's Cannon is the first book of the Age of Unreason series.
[edit] Books and comics
- Neil Gaiman's The Sandman, Newton is represented during a dissection of an orangutan. Newton's role in Western Civilization is of key importance to one of The Endless, Destruction, who realizes with dread that Newton's reasoned inquiries ("Are not light and gross bodies intraconvertible?") will lead to "flame... The Big Bang. The Loud Explosions."
- In The Red Seas Newton is shown having faked his death and being given life extending treatments. A later story arc, "With a bound he was free...", stars Newton in a standalone adventure.
- The Age of Unreason is a series of four books focusing on Isaac Newton finding the Philosophers Stone.
- Isaac Newton is the main recurring character of Gotlib's comic La_Rubrique-à-Brac, where various causes ranging from a short-sighted pelican to a young Napoléon Bonaparte invariably lead to Newton being hit by an apple (or anything else) and subsequently discovering the law of universal gravitation.
- Newton is a major characther in Neal Stephenson's The Baroque cycle (novel), where he is shown as, among many other things: an obsessed alchemist, a homosexual, the ruthless Master of the Mint, the most brilliant man alive and the former roommate of Dr. Daniel Waterhouse, one of the main characters of the cycle.
[edit] Film and television
- Newton: A Tale of Two Isaacs (movie for television) 1997 - Canadian/Irish production depicts Isaac Newton as a boy and as an adult.[1]
- "Sir Isaac Newton: The Gravity of Genius" on Biography (television series) 1995 - USA prodcution documentary.[2]
- In a 1993 episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation ("Descent", Part 1), the android Data programs the ship's "holodeck" to simulate a game of poker among some of history's greatest scientists, resulting in a lively exchange between Newton (played by actor John Neville), Albert Einstein (played by Jim Norton), and Stephen Hawking (playing himself).
- Newton appeared as the 200-year-old fascist Emperor Dornkirk of Zaibach in the anime television series The Vision of Escaflowne.
[edit] Books and comics
- In the song "Super Pop", Madonna expressed that if she's a genius she would be Isaac Newton. It says
"If I was an animal, I'd be a lion, If I was a car, I'd be an Aston Martin, If I was a genius, I'd be Isaac Newton, If I was a hero, I'd be Martin Luther". This song written by Madonna and Mirwais Ahmadzaï was released via download to ICON fanclub members only.
