Newton was gay
Isaac Newton probably NOT a virgin
RobRoy1
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a4_208.html
While he may not have confused it to a female, the question still remains open as to whether he might have confused it to a man…
http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/7/0,5716,115657+2+108764,00.html (scan down to “International Prominence”)
Read between the lines the account of his friendship with a certain “Fatio”.
None of this is conclusive, but we must ask after all this time what does it mean when a reasonably good looking, well appointed genius eschews offers of romance from the beauties of his day and suffers an emotional breakdown over the separation of a male friend? Couple that with the truth that if he was (sshhhhh) g-a-y, it certainly wouldn’t be spelled out in bold letters for us today.
While I’m not a radical fearie proponent that all geniuses were actually gay (in truth an anachonistic designation), and also recognize that in a less homophobic (if only by virtue of a mind set that pretended it didn’t exist) time, not all intense male-male friendships were erotic, nonetheless, sometimes what it looks like is just what it is…
Cooper2
Regardless of the t
Today I start a week-long mini-series on 3 lgbt scientists who worked on meteorology and climatology.
One scientist is most associated with the rainbow – or, more accurately, the spectrum – and that is Sir Isaac Newton. I place him in this mini-series because the spectrum and the rainbow are created in the same manner – by the splitting of light rays.
When it comes to listing historical lgbt people more often than not we are attempting to put modern labels onto people who were alive before such labels were invented. Were all Ancient Greek soldiers gay because they were expected to have regular sex and relationships with younger men? Did homosexuality exist before it was given that name? You could also demand if gravity existed before gave it a name? Yes it did, we just understood it differently.
It may aid to think of historical sexual orientation by using a phrase I encountered recently in reference to a scientist I’ll deal with in 3 days time, Alexander von Humboldt – “Queer refers not only to bisexual or homosexual men and women – it also includes direct people whose sexuality nevertheless falls outside social norms of behaviou
Isaac Newton
Newton was born at Woolsthorpe Manor in Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth, a hamlet in Lincolnshire. He went to school at Grantham, and studied at Trinity College, Cambridge from 1661. In 1669 he was appointed Lucasian Professor of Mathematics. This would normally include required him to be ordained a priest of the Church of England, but Newton obtained a special permission from King Charles II to be appointed without organism ordained, as his religious views were somewhat orthodox.
Newton's laws of motion and theory of universal gravitation revolutionised the understanding of the physical society, and explained how the same strength that makes an apple fall from a tree accounts for the motions of the planets. The Newtonian explanation of the planet was unchallenged until Einstein developed the theory of relativity in the first 20th century, and is still an adequate approximation to the real earth for most everyday purposes. In optics, he was the first to business that white beam is made up of a mixture of the colo
Isaac Newton’s Personal Life
Especially in the earlier part of his animation, Newton was a deeply introverted character and fiercely protective of his privacy. Even in his maturity, having become rich, well-known, laden with honours and internationally acclaimed as one of the world’s foremost thinkers, he remained deeply insecure, given to fits of depression and outbursts of violent temper, and implacable in pursuit of anyone by whom he felt threatened. The most famous example of this is his carefully-orchestrated campaign to wreck the reputation of Gottfried Leibniz, who he believed (quite unfairly) had stolen the discovery of calculus from him. Yet he was also capable of superb generosity and kindness, and there is no lack of tributes to his affability and hospitality, at least in his later years.
His psychological problems culminated in what would now be called a nervous breakdown in mid-1693, when, after five nights of sleeping ‘not a wink’, he temporarily lost all grip on reality and became convinced that his friends Locke and Pepys were conspiring against him. He later confessed to Locke that during this crisis, ‘when one told me you were sickly ... I answered twere superior i