Essential Information
| Location |
Royal Observatory
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|---|---|
22 Mar 2011
Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night;
God said "Let Newton be" and all was light.
Alexander Pope
The antechapel where the statue stood
Of Newton with his prism and silent face,
The marble index of a mind for ever
Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone.
William WordsworthLast weekend I had the chance to see Craig Baxter's play Let Newton Be!, performed in Cambridge during their Science Festival. I wrote a post outlining some of my thoughts on the play and on representations of scientific genius, which you can read here. As the play, and these couplets show, Newton has long been a figure that attracted eulogy and myth-making. He was, of course, a legend in his own lifetime, something that needs to be borne in mind when we consider his role in introducing potential longitude solutions to parliament.