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Title details for Isaac the Alchemist by Mary Losure - Available

Isaac the Alchemist

Secrets of Isaac Newton, Reveal'd

by Mary Losure
Steven Crossley
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available
Before Isaac Newton became the father of physics, an accomplished mathematician, or a leader of the scientific revolution, he was a boy living in an apothecary's house, observing and experimenting, recording his observations of the world in a tiny notebook. As a young genius living in a time before science as we know it existed, Isaac studied the few books he could get his hands on, built handmade machines, and experimented with alchemy, a process of chemical reactions that seemed (at the time) to be magical. Mary Losure's riveting narrative nonfiction account of Isaac's early life traces his development as a thinker from his childhood, in friendly prose that will capture the attention of today's budding scientists-as if by magic.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Awards

  • Release date

    February 14, 2017

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781666594638
      • File size: 74936 KB
      • Duration: 02:36:06

  • Languages

    • English

  • Levels

    • Lexile® Measure: 1010
    • Text Difficulty: 6-8

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Using primary sources and reasoned conjecture, Mary Losure chronicles the difficult formative years of Isaac Newton. Narrator Steven Crossley has a professorial-sounding English accent but bubbles with reverent enthusiasm for his subject, sometimes with humor. In the age before the development of physics, the prickly and solitary young Newton worked tirelessly to use mathematics to explain what was then viewed as magic. Much of Newton's story is gleaned from his own carefully kept notebooks. Listeners can almost see the twinkle in Crossley's eyes as he reads from preposterous medicinal concoctions of the time and from Newton's list of his own boyhood sins--such as making pies on Sunday. Newton's scientific contributions cannot be overstated. Although he never unlocked the mystery of alchemy, he discovered the laws of physics, light refraction, and planetary motion. L.T. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      December 5, 2016
      In this charming biography of Isaac Newton (1642–1727), Losure (Wild Boy) posits that “this last sorcerer—this greatest of all alchemists—was the same man who banished magic from the scientific world.” Portrayed as an uncommonly inquisitive, albeit reclusive, thinker with a secret addiction to alchemy (not an unusual preoccupation in a period when the borders between science and magic were uncertain), Newton may have written as many as a million words regarding alchemy, papers he kept while destroying many related to his revolutionary work in other fields: mathematics, optics, and what is now called physics. Interspersing engrossing chapters about alchemy (but largely ignoring the last third of Newton’s life), Losure uses a light touch to trace his childhood endeavors, his rise from student to professor at Cambridge’s Trinity College, his prickly relationship with other scientists in the Royal Society (Newton became a member in 1672), and the publication of his masterpiece, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, in 1687. Period images and afterwords with curiosity-spiking headings such as “Stinks, Bangs & More Chymical Secrets” bring additional depth and interest to this study of Newton’s surprising pursuits. Ages 10–up.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

Levels

  • Lexile® Measure:1010
  • Text Difficulty:6-8

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