• Question: are you a fan of Isaac Newton?

    Asked by flower_girl2776 to Susan on 23 Jun 2015.
    • Photo: Susan Cartwright

      Susan Cartwright answered on 23 Jun 2015:

      Of his scientific work, yes big-time.

      Of him as a person, no: everything I’ve read about him suggests he was a thoroughly nasty piece of work, given to bad-tempered arguments with colleagues and attempts to ruin the reputations of people he didn’t like.

      If I had to invite one 17th-century scientist to dinner, I think it would be Edmond Halley. He wasn’t one of the top-notch one-in-a-century geniuses like Newton, but *everybody* (even Newton) seems to have liked him.

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