Isaac Newton.

James Gleick. Isaac Newton. New York: Vintage, 2003.

"Isaac Newton said he had seen further by standing on the shoulders of giants, but he did not believe it. He was born into a world of darkness, obscurity, and magic; led a strangely pure and obsessive life, lacking parents, lovers, and friends; quarreled bitterly with great men who crossed his path; veered at least once to the brink of madness; cloaked his work in secrecy; and yet discovered more of the essential core of human knowledge than anyone before or after. He was chief architect of the modern world."

So begins James Gleick's national bestseller about the man who brought us the scientific concept of gravity, the inertia principle, the idea that a body in motion tends to stay in motion, and the notion that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Newton also invented calculus, but kept this treasure to himself; he devoted many of his productive years to that most secret of sciences, alchemy; and he heretically argued against the Trinity.

When Newton died, England, for the first time, granted a state funeral for a subject whose attainment lay in the realm of the mind. The poet, Alexander Pope, wrote:

    Nature and nature's laws lay hid in the night;
    God said, Let Newton be! And All was Light.

In modern times the relativity of Einstein appeared as an assault against the Newtonian schema of absolute space and time. George Bernard Shaw declared to radio listeners that Newtonianism "had crumpled up and was succeeded by the Einstein universe." But Newton had left openings for the relativists to follow, and Einstein did not presume to dismiss him: "Let no one suppose," he said in 1919, "that the mighty work of Newton can really be superseded by this or any other theory. His great and lucid ideas will retain their unique significance for all time as the foundation of our whole modern conceptual structure in the sphere of natural philosophy."

ALL REVIEWS BY MARTIN H. LEVINSON, PH.D.