Increase Productivty

“A BOOK NOBODY UNDERSTANDS” (2)

A more recent blow was the departure from Cambridge of John Wickins, Newton’s roommate of twenty years. Wickins became minister of the parish church at Stoke Edith, married, and fathered a son named Nicholas. Though they had been through much together, the two friends would never meet again and exchanged no more than a letter or two in the coming years.

Newton’s prescription for loneliness was work, work, and more work. Humphrey Newton observed: “I never saw him take any Recreation or Pastime, either in Riding out to take the Air, Walking, Bowling, or any other Exercise whatever, Thinking all Hours lost that was not spent in his Studies, to which he kept so close that he seldom left his Chamber.”3 The reclusive professor had even more time to himself because Cambridge students were little interested in natural philosophy. Humphrey noted that his employer often lectured to the classroom walls. Finally, he stopped going to the lecture hall altogether, placing his texts on deposit in the college library as was required by statute.

Over the years, Newton became the very model of the absentminded professor. He ate little and often had to be reminded by Humphrey that the dinner delivered to his room had gone untouched. He would express surprise, walk over to the table, and eat a bite or two standing up. “I cannot say,” Humphrey noted, “I ever saw Him sit at [the] Table by himself.”

Newton rarely went to bed until two or three in the morning and often slept in his clothes. He rose at five or six, fully refreshed. His long, silver hair was seldom combed, his stockings hung loose, and his shoes were down at the heels. On those rare occasions when he went out, it was usually to take a meal in the dining hall, overlooked by the giant portrait of Henry VIII.

But, according to Humphrey, things did not always go as they should have. Instead of heading almost straight across the Great Court, Newton sometimes made a left turn, only to wind up on Trinity Street. On realizing his mistake, he would turn back, and then “sometimes without going into the Hall return to his Chamber again.”

Taken From : Isaac Newton