Well Newton was not a known alchemist. He was
the alchemist. He was the most readed and studied alchemist of the epoque.
Physicists presented to Newton like the great genious and when studied his work (when died) physicists discovered that the genious was an alchemist. Then they split his work into two parts: physics/math and the rest. The former was published, and the rest was burned...
Well, fortunately the family doesn't burn other works and were rediscovered around 1960. They are so numerous that still today historians have studied only a small part of them, in fact, the database was still opened the last year. I don't know if now was already closed once all Newton articles recolected for further study.
However, the vision of Newton like an alchemist/chemist with very, very small interest in physics or math (low level research in his words when compared with chemical sciences) is well proven. The interest is computed around 30/1. That is, 30 years of intense research for chemistry/alchemy for each year on math/physics.
His derivation of gravitational affinity from his previous theory of chemical affinity is well-proven, including his laboratory notes in experiments with attraction and measure of masses, etc. The history of apple, so extended, is considered a mith without support today. It is really interesting that Brian Greene in his Elegant universe use a apple for illustrate the structure of matter. Casuality? Perhaps an attempt to suggest that from theoretical efforts only one can obtain a theory of nature?
The popular idea of Newton like a pure theoretician, discovering natural laws from the falling of an apple, is a mith. I said is correct. Next recent words of Ludovico Geymonat (in Spanish)
"
La atención que dedican a estos estudios [it refers to Newton chemical studies] los más modernos historiadores ha modificado profundamente el esquema tradicional con el que se presentaba la figura de Newton. Ya no se nos presenta como el puro teórico prevalentemente dirigido a sistematizar las grandes leyes de la mecánica, sino sobre todo como un experimentador, empeñado desde los primeros años de su juventud en interrogar a la naturaleza, recoger con la máxima precisión los datos de la experiencia y controlar en ellos toda tentativa de explicación teórica."
Some modern authors consider to Newton chemist and physicist, other consider that was the second physical chemist (Boyle was the 1º) of history.
Isaac Newton, 1987, Principios matemáticos de la filosofía natural 1. Introducción y Libro I, (Introducción, traducción y notas de Eloy Rada García) Alianza Editorial S.A, Madrid.
is one interesting book containing the latter historical discoveries on the topic. I also have notes in the last confgerence in the topic. If you cannot read in Spanish, don't worry. I prepared an educative article on the history of Newton and his research and was available in a previous web. I will post for open download again in
www.canonicalscience.com
since that history is one of research program of Center
www.canonical.chemicalforums.com[/URL]
The case of Newton is not unique. Many historians of science claim openly that the history of physics was often rewritten and physics emphasized over other sciences.
There are dozen of well-documented examples: for example the prediction of neutron was not done by physicists, the first study of quantum tuneling was not that of Gamow, one of Feynman theorems was discovered years before, etc, etc.
Unfortunately, this style of many physicists of hidde/ignore contributions of other fields/authors appears to be today observed in string theory literature. Some people claimed that several studies and claims of string theory were done in other theories before (a mathematician said to me that some recent work in M theory was done years before in other theory), but string theorists do not cite them (she contacted in several occasions with Witten and others). I have not historical confirmation of this fact, but i have a phrase from a string theorist supporting that interpretation.
