6. Sir Isaac Newton, the father of modern science, was a manic depressive
Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) was the shining light of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century. Newton’s great contributions to science include discovering the composition of white light, which paved the way for modern optics, and his three laws of motion laid the foundation for modern physics. He is best remembered as the man who discovered gravity, though the story of the discovery coming after an apple fell from a tree and hit his head is a myth created by Newton himself. In mathematics, Newton also discovered the infinitesimal calculus, which is vital to everything from biology to economics.
From his biography, however, most historians and psychologists have drawn the conclusion that Newton was bipolar. Newton’s childhood saw his father die while he was still in the womb and his mother remarry and abandon her son altogether. This trauma led to the fits of rage characteristic of manic depressives, which were to characterize his life: he recalled ‘threatening my [step]father and mother to burn them and the house over them’. Punctuating his violent outbursts were moments of terrible remorse, and his undergraduate notebooks reveal both his regret of acts such as ‘hitting my sister’, crippling anxiety, and suicidal thoughts.
Newton’s mental illness meant that he had unwavering self-confidence, believing himself appointed by God and reacting violently to criticism of his findings. In 1678, facile criticism from Jesuits at Cambridge gave him a nervous breakdown. Fear of criticism made him conceal many of his most important discoveries, and but for the encouragement of his friend, Edmund Halley (of Halley’s Comet-fame), he would not have published his magnum opus, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica. Later in life, Newton suffered paranoid delusions, and isolated himself from his friends. Nonetheless, his great achievements saw him become the first scientist to be knighted in 1705.