The second one, in 1693, seems to have been even more severe, and Newton experienced insomnia, loss of appetite and paranoid delusions that led to him sending strange and attacking letters to friends and colleagues. The first one occured in 1678, after an intense argument with Robert Hooke and one year before his mother died. Newton suffered at least two mental breakdowns during his life. Horrobin sees schizotypal tendencies in Newton's behaviour. Researchers like Sula Wolff, Anthony Storr or Hershman and Lieb brought forward the argument that he could have suffered from manic-depression, and David F. William Whiston, Newton's successor to the Lucasian chair at Cambridge, described his precursor as of the „most fearful, cautious and suspicious temperament“. It was due to the diplomatic skills of Edmond Halley that Newton continued working, but he didn't publish his new book Opticks until Hooke had died. When fellow Royal Society scientist Robert Hooke claimed that Newton learned the inverse-square law of gravity from him, Newton felt deeply offended and threatened to stop working on the third book of the Principia. This led to a bitter controversy between Leibniz and Newton over priority for the method, which continued until Leibniz's death in 1714.

Although Newton developed his version of the Calculus earlier than Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, he only published his work in 1704, twenty years after Leibniz's publication. These and other personality traits have led psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen to speculate that Newton could have had Asperger's syndrome, an attribution that can still be found in many popular science books.Īn often noted characteristic of Newton's personality was his remarkable fear of criticism, which resulted in a hesitation to publish new works. According to Humphrey Newton, he devoted himself completely to his studies, going to bed late and eating little, often absorbed in thought and careless about the things around him. His difficulties with social relationships continued throughout his whole life, and he doesn't seem to have ever been involved in a romantic affair with a man or woman. However, he was also considered reclusive, and until late in life, he kept a small circle of acquaintances, usually staying in the company of a few close friends like the Swiss mathematician Fatio de Duillier or his half-niece Catherine Barton. without Anger, Peevishness or Passion“, and William Stukeley, one of his first biographers, remembered having seen him laugh often, and said that he possessed „a natural pleasantness of temper“. On the contrary, Humphrey Newton, his amanuensis for five years, wrote shortly after Newton's death that he experienced the latter as having been „of sedate & even Temper.

Later in life, his aggressions must have eased, and he is not reported as having particularly unpleasant behavior as an adult.

In a list of sins assembled in 1662, he admits having beaten his sister and others, as well as having threatened his parents to burn down their house. Newton seems to have shown an aggressive and unsocial behavior in his boyhood. However, as became only known in the 1930s, Newton devoted a lot more time to alchemical and theological research than to physics or mathematics. He died in 1727 at the age of 84, having become an international celebrity and the pre-eminent scientist of his time. His second major work, Opticks, appeared in 1704, and the following year he was knighted in Cambridge. In 1696, he moved to London as Warden of the Royal Mint, becoming Master of the Mint in 1699. In 1687, after years of intense labour and exchange with leading intellectuals of his era, he published his Principia Mathematica Philosophiae Naturalis, considered one of the most influential scientific books of all time. Two years later, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and became President in 1703, a position he held until his death. After returning to the university, he was elected a Fellow of Trinity College in 1667 and Lucasian Professor of Mathematics in 1669. During this time, he developed the basic concepts for much of his future work, later calling these years „the prime of my age for invention“. In 1665, a plague forced him to leave Cambridge and move back to his family home. His mother returned a few years later, and after finishing school in Grantham, he entered Cambridge University in 1661, where he studied mathematics, physics and astronomy. His father, a prosperous farmer also named Isaac, died a few months before his birth, and when his mother remarried, Newton was left in the care of his grandparents. Newton was born on Januin Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire.

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