Timothy Ferris reviews a new biography of Isaac Newton: Isaac Newton by James Gleick (Pantheon). “… an elegantly written, insightful work that brings Newton to life and does him justice.” (via Arts & Letters Daily)

p. s. Patricia Fara in Science: “In describing how Newton pursued the active agent lying at the heart of Dame Nature, Gleick seems to be searching for the secret source of Newton's own mind through exposing not only his mathematical quandaries but also his sexual fantasies as he spiraled downward into melancholic solitude.”

p. s. From a review by John Banville in the Guardian: “Yet throughout his long life Newton continued to experiment in alchemy; indeed, he was, as Gleick writes, ‘the peerless alchemist of Europe’. These studies in the dark art were conducted in deepest secrecy, and did not come to light until centuries after his death, when a large portion of his papers were reassembled. The economist John Maynard Keynes, the saviour of much of this documentation, was astonished by what he read. ‘Newton,’ Keynes told his students at Trinity, ‘was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians.’

p. s. Another review by Robin McKie in Guardian Unlimited.