Isaac Newton

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ruthlessly, if uneasily, over a nation riven by religious strife and brimming with political intrigue. These years saw the rise to power of the Puritans, the rigorous Protestants who had provided much of Parliament's muscle in the civil war, and who now dominated Cromwell's government. As their name suggested, the Puritans sought to "purify" Christianity: they saw vice and vanity everywhere, and they went about imposing their austere code on the entire country. Newton grew up in a nation whose government proscribed all non-Puritan forms of Christianity, closed theaters, frowned upon music (save for hymns), halted commerce on Sundays, and administered harsh, Old-Testament penalties for crimes like adultery. A grim, pessimistic form of religion thus pressed into every nook and cranny of English life.

Cromwell's Puritan dictatorship endured until 1660, although the Lord Protector himself died in 1658, leaving the nation in the hands of his genial son Richard, who proved incapable ...

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at ease amid the rough-and-tumble of his schoolfellows. From a young age, he seems to have harbored a fascination for gadgets and odd contraptions, spending his free time tinkering with kites, water wheels, sundials, and clocks. But his inquisitive intelligence apparently failed to bring him success at school, where he was described as "idle" and "inattentive"--his mind was doubtless occupied with other--perhaps larger--matters.

His performance at Grantham was further disturbed by Newton's obligations in managing his mother's estate; and indeed, his family expected these duties to fill the rest of Isaac's life. Yet it appears that someone intervened--whether one of his schoolmasters, ...

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