Newton and the Counterfeiter: The Unknown Detective Career of the World's Greatest Scientist Book

This book starts with an extended thumbnail sketch of Newton and his Natural Philosophy. This is done quite well - though, if that is what you are after perhaps a better book is Isaac Newton.

This one runs through his three laws (things will keep moving unless you stop them, the force you use to stop them equals their mass multiplied by their acceleration and whatever shove you give something it shoves back at you with the same force). He briefly explains the calculus. He spends lots of time talking about Newton's obsession with alchemy. Says very little about his Optics. And of course, spends lots of time on Newton's wacky experiments on himself.

That Newton was a great hater is also something brought to the fore here - and something that is quite important to the story this book is ostensibly about - as, ironically enough, is Newton's obsession with alchemy and Biblical history.

The alchemy is particularly important. Newton wanted to learn how to turn base metals into gold. He saw this as being a proof of the existence of God and therefore something that was at least as important as his laws of motion in exposing to those deserving few the workings of the mind of God. But where Newton ultimately failed, there were at the time people who were quite literally turning base metals into gold - melting down coins made of precious metals and recasting them with mixtures cheaper metals added. Alchemy's dream had come 'true' and as the author speculates, this might have been part of the reason why Newton, as the guy in charge of the Royal Mint, was quite so diligent in his pursuing counterfeiters. His obsession with alchemy and his belief in the near divine right of Kings, also debased with the debasing of the currency.

But Newton is only the best known of the two main characters of this book. The other is William Chaloner - a man who was, if nothing else, very amusing. His audacity is breathtaking. You know, if you are a counterfeiter then printing a book on how to counterfeit currency probably isn't the most obvious thing to do. And if you get into trouble with the Royal Mint, perhaps drawing attention to how corrupt the Royal Mint also isn't the most obvious means of getting out of trouble - that both proved remarkably effective shows just how far you can go with a little luck and a massive doze of self-confidence.

As I said, Newton was a great hater and being fooled by Chaloner a couple of times was enough to ensure no stone would be left unturned to bring Chaloner down. You know, Newton is the guy who is famous for the quote, "If I have seen further it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants" - which was actually meant, not as a statement of modesty as it might sound, but rather as a dig at one of his endless list of enemies who just happened to be particularly short.

Much of this book details Newton's efforts to have Chaloner hanged for his efforts as a counterfeiter - if not also for Chaloner having made a fool Newton.

I didn't remember (or perhaps never knew) that Newton lost lots of money in the South Sea Bubble, as the writer explains (with all the benefit of hindsight) the maths that ought to have convinced Newton he was about to blow lots of his money was precisely the kind of maths he had put to such remarkable use in turning the heavens from dark confusion to transparent clarity for us. But the lesson is that greed makes fools of us all. Standing at the wrong end of yet another bubble - and one we seem determined not to learn any lessons from - we are hardly in any position to feel smug at Newton's foolishness.

The most interesting parts of this book for me were the bits about trimming coins - I knew about this before, but what had never been made clear to me was just how much people had trimmed off. The point was to make money by trimming off some of the gold but not so much that you were not able to still pass them off as being full weight. This is often used as an example to explain why we ended up with paper (that is, valueless) money. But I thought maybe only say 5% had been trimmed - examples are given of surveys of the weights of coins being made at the time and them finding that up to half of the weight of gold overall on the coins sampled having been trimmed from them.

The other really interesting thing is about the price of silver. England was finding itself constantly short of silver coins - the reason was that silver was more valuable across the channel in France and so people were melting down English coins, sending it down the Thames and bringing back bars of French gold.

The last thing I want to mention is that I hadn't ever really realised that Newton lived at the time of the transition between James II and King Billy and that he was quite so involved in supporting King Billy. Now, you would think that a Belfast boy would have noticed that before.

This is an interesting wee book about chapters of Newton's life that are generally passed over either in silence or very briefly in other biographies. Given that it is impossible to be considered properly educated without having some knowledge of Newton and Newtonian Physics (I've given you his three laws of motion above and in order) there could be worse ways to find out about these topics than this book - but as I said, Gleik offers a slightly better way to find out about Newton if you are more interested in the science.