Never at rest
by Richard S. Westfall · first published 1980
80% recommend20% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Authoritative biography of Isaac Newton that digs into his conceptual problems and his less-discussed alchemical and theological work; the standard Newton biography for readers who want depth.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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…historians of science. I'd recommend pairing Chandrashekar with I. Bernard Cohen and Anne Whitman's translation of The Principia, I. Bernard Cohen's, A Guide to Newton’s Principia, Robert Westfall's biography Never at Rest, and the more recent synthesis of Newton scholarship, The Cambridge Companion to Newton. Oh, and if you really want to understand Newton and his view of the universe, you have to dip into his alchemy…
on “Newton’s Daunting Masterpiece Had a Surprisingly Wide Audience, Historians Find” ↗…who developed the theory. The science content is high so you need a good foundation. [5] The Historical Development of Quantum Theory Richard Westfall wrote the best Newton biography that I know. [6] Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton Finally the issue number 2 of the 72nd volume of Review of Modern Physics [7] is a gem; packed with historical reviews of the development of all fields in physics during…
on “Who Did the Math for General Relativity First, Einstein or Hilbert?” ↗…mix of the modern and the ancient. Remember that he devoted most of his working life to compiling a chronology of the old Testament and to summarising various alchemical works. See Westfall's biography Never at Rest.
on “Isaac Newton’s Personal Notebooks Go Digital” ↗Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton http://www.amazon.com/Never-Rest-Biography-Cambridge-Paperba...
on “Ask HN: what are your favorite biographies/autobiographies of a scientist?” ↗…being lauded a great engineer. Anyway, here are some recommendations, hopefully you can pick one or two you still dont have: Einstein -> Subtle is the lord, Abraham Pais (Already mentioned) Newton -> Never at rest, Richard Westfall (Already mentioned) Galileo -> Galileo, John Heilbron Oppenheimer -> Inside the centre (Ray Monk), more technical: "Robert Oppenheimer, a life" A. Pais Euler -> Euler: The Master…
on “10,000 Hours with Claude Shannon (2017)” ↗…Geometry of Spacetime: An Introduction to Special and General Relativity http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000YJ4ZTE/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp... I also highly recommend Westfall's definitive biography of Newton, "Never at Rest." He spends a lot of time picking apart Newton's conceptual problems with gravity. It's like looking over Newton's shoulder, with added commentary, so you can glimpse a lot more about the weird nature…
on “Ask HN: What is Gravity?” ↗_Never At Rest_ by Richard Westfall is the authoritative biography on him.
on “John Carmack: I’m going to work on artificial general intelligence” ↗If you liked that one you’ll love Westfall’s Never At Rest
on “Isaac Newton’s attempts to unlock secret code of pyramids” ↗Westfall's Never at Rest is pretty good too
on “What I learned as a hired consultant to autodidact physicists (2016)” ↗If you like that book, read the Newton biography "Never at Rest." Almost certainly Stephenson read it in his research, and he gets the nature of Newton totally correct in fictional form.
on “40k coin tosses yield ambiguous evidence for dynamical bias” ↗…you have worked in the same field. If you want vapid books like this one or ,a little less charitably, Walter Isaacson's Einstein go for it. But if you want fantastic tour de forces like Westfall's "Never at Rest", Joseph Frank's series on Dostoevsky, Pais' "Subtle is the lord",Stach's books on Kafka you need an experienced world-class expert in the subject in a multi-year (sometimes, multi-decade) effort.
on “10,000 Hours with Claude Shannon (2017)” ↗…apocryphal, found in Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes etc. Levenson's book (which BTW has a lot more of interest beyond whatever I put in the blog post) cites two sources for this point: • Richard Westfall, Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton (1980), p. 483 • A. Rupert Hall, Isaac Newton: Adventurer in Thought (1992), p. 231 I looked up both those books and both of them call it an anecdote. Westfall: > There…
on “Don’t Mess with a Genius” ↗When Isaac Newton came to Cambridge, he matriculated a subsizar, meaning that he effectively worked as a menial servant rather than paying fees. Relevant section of Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton - http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=3ngEugMMa9YC&pg=PA71&...
on “What I Learned from a Sex-Crazed Short-Order Cook” ↗Tangential to topic, but I have been reading a Newton biography (Never at Rest) recently, and I found it interesting how reliant Newton was on the observations of other scientists. He had correspondence with scientists like Halley and Flamsteed on the basis of getting their observations…
on “Many researchers were not compliant with their published data sharing statement” ↗