NEWTON AND THE COUNTERFEITER: The Unknown Detective Career of the World’s Greatest Scientist
Thomas Levenson
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
History/Biography
ISBN: 9780151012787
Isaac Newton (1642-1727) did so many things so well that some of them, though important, have been virtually forgotten.
The thinker who conceived the idea of gravitational force, figured out how light rays behave, invented what we today call calculus and formulated three famous laws about the motion and interaction of bodies also speculated on the nature and knowability of God and served his country for years as watchman and guardian of its currency.
Thomas Levenson, a writer and science professor at MIT, has rescued from relative obscurity Newton’s long vendetta against counterfeiters in a book that goes a long way toward humanizing the man and making his accomplishments understandable to the lay reader.
In the last years of the 17th century, England was in financial crisis. Counterfeiters and “clippers” were debasing its currency to the point where the country could barely finance its expensive foreign wars and international trade. Newton, already famous for his scientific work, was lured to London in 1696 for what looked like a sinecure --- overseeing the Royal mint (paper money was not yet in circulation). Counterfeiting was rampant; so too was “clipping” --- the practice of shaving tiny bits off metal coins to accumulate enough metal to stamp out bogus duplicates. The standard penalty for both offenses was hanging.
Newton went to work with righteous zeal, reforming the mint itself and relentlessly hunting down counterfeiters. Levenson sees Newton as almost maniacally driven, quickly building up a web of spies and informers who infiltrated the counterfeiting trade and kept him abreast of developments. William Chaloner was only the cleverest of his many adversaries, but it was no contest. Newton simply overwhelmed Chaloner with a mass of evidence that brought him to the gallows, much to Newton’s satisfaction.
Levenson tells the story with close attention to detail. Things get fairly technical here and there as he explains the workings of the English financial system and the details of Newton’s scientific work, but Levenson is an elegant writer and strives to keep the main narrative line going smoothly.
This is not easy to do. He has to start with Newton’s earlier career in gravity, optics, mathematics and --- surprisingly --- even his obvious interest in alchemy. Then he has to introduce Chaloner, an opportunistic ne’er-do-well but a man clever enough to trick others into doing much of his dirty work for him. Along the way Levenson also gives us glimpses of Newton’s earnest efforts to find a place for God in his cosmos. He also itemizes the large cast of bit players who worked with Chaloner at counterfeiting and in many cases ratted on him to Newton. Newton too has his supporting cast, and it is an all-star team of great literary, political and scientific names: Pepys, Locke, Boyle, Halley and Huygens, among others. All these peripheral matters are certainly important to Levenson’s story, but they do give the book a structural problem.
The result is that Newton and Chaloner do not actually come face to face until halfway through the book. Chaloner tried to blacken Newton’s reputation, insisting to his last breath that he was being unjustly “murthured.” The trial was perfunctory, the verdict virtually certain, the hanging immediate. Isaac Newton, the rigidly perfectionist scientist, knew he had done his job well. He simply ignored Chaloner’s several letters pleading for mercy.
This is a side of Isaac Newton that few today know much about. We learn little from Levenson about Newton’s private life with the exception of one possible romantic involvement. Isaac Newton must have been a wonderful man to know --- but a merciless foe to tangle with.
--- Reviewed by Robert Finn (Robertfinn@aol.com)
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