Michael Marotta wrote in
:

Sir Isaac Newton spent the last thirty years of his life as
Warden and then Master of the British Royal Mint. Before Newton,
the posts of warden and master were only sinecures for the
favored who then further stocked their own larders at public
expense. They were not exceptions. Married to sisters, the master
smelter and the assay master were brothers-in-law, living beyond
the limits of their official salaries, inferentially guilty of
conspiring to pass debased silver into the official coining
operation. The vector that impelled Newton's trajectory was the
sale of dies from the Mint to counterfeiters on the outside.

While most educated people know something about his
Three Laws of Motion, his work at the British Royal
Mint is less often taught. Biographer David Berlinski
(_Newton's Gift: How Sir Isaac Newton Unlocked the
System of the World_, New York: The Free Press, 2000)
called Newton's tenure at the mint "uninteresting."
Numismatists, who study the forms and uses of money,
feel differently.

_Newton and the Counterfeiter: The Unknown Detective Career of the
World's Greatest Scientist_ by Thomas Levenson (Houghton Mifflin
Harcourt, 2009) is intended for a general readership, yet rests on
an extraordinary foundation of careful scholarship. Thomas
Levenson teaches science journalism at MIT. He has been granted
several awards for his PBS documentaries. Levenson delivers to
print the videographer's impact of sight and sound. You walk down
the alleys and into the pubs where Isaac Newton investigated
crimes against the Mint of which he served as warden and later
master. He had himself sworn as a justice of the peace so that he
could pursue and prosecute counterfeiters.

Newton's colleagues called him fearful, cautious, suspicious,
insidious, ambitious, excessively covetous of praise, and
impatient of contradiction. Even his relatives and his true
friends were modest in their praise of Newton. Physically sound in
his life, he died at 84. He had lost only one tooth, still had
much of his hair, and read without glasses. Yet, he was a
hypochondriac, suffering from illnesses and diseases that he
treated with medicines he made for himself.

A NEWTON BIBLIOGRAPHY
Berlinski, David. Newton's Gift: How Sir Isaac Newton Unlocked the
System of the World. New York: Free Press, Simon and Schuster,
2000. Craig, Sir John. Newton at the Mint. Cambridge: University
Press, 1946. Craig, Sir John. "Isaac Newton and the
Counterfeiters." Notes and Records of the Royal Society (18),
London: 1963. Craig, Sir John. "Isaac Newton - Crime
Investigator," Nature 182, (19 July 1958), pages 149-152. Keynes,
Milo. "The Personality of Isaac Newton," Notes and Records of the
Royal Society (49), London: The Royal Society, 1995. Levenson,
Thomas. Newton and the Counterfeiter: The Unknown Detective Career
of the World's Greatest Scientist (Boston;New York: Houghton
Mifflin Harcourt, 2009. 336 pp. $25 Marotta, Michael. "Sir Isaac
Newton: Warden and Master of the Mint", The Numismatist, November
2001. Newman, E. G. V. "The Gold Metallurgy of Isaac Newton." The
Gold Bulletin Vol 8. No. 3, London: The World Gold Council, 1975.
Westfall, Richard S. Never at Rest: a Biography of Isaac Newton.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980. White, Michael. Isaac
Newton: The Last Sorcerer. Reading, Mass.: Helix Books, Perseus
Books, 1997. www.experiencefestival.com/newtonmas
www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/, The Newton Project, Professor Rob
Iliffe Director, University of Sussex, East Sussex - BN1 9SH
www.royalmint.com/museum/newton Web site pages of the British
Royal Mint.


Nice little teaser into Newton's life at the mint! Now, I must read
more!

It's fun reading of the interesting people and events that took
place in the mint's past. I wonder if any of that happens in today's
world.

Eric Babula