Isaac Newton (1642-1727)

Sir Isaac Newton by Enoch Seeman, 1730.

In one list of the most influential people in history, the English physicist and mathematician Sir Isaac Newton ranks second, after Muhammad, and just ahead of Jesus Christ. Newton's ranking is not surprising because he was considered a near-deity in the seventeenth century. Many of Newton's contemporaries regarded him as a god, and few today would disagree that he was one of the greatest scientists that ever lived (Bragg, 1998).

As the founding father of modern science, Newton challenged Aristotelianism, for centuries the received wisdom on the nature of the universe (it ascribed an inner purpose to everything in nature), and was the first to explain the universe in terms we understand and use today. Working alone, he studied the nature of light and the construction of telescopes, formulated laws of motion, and invented calculus contemporaneously with Leibniz. (He accused Leibniz of plagiarism and engaged in a long and bitter dispute over priority.) He became a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1667, and Lucasian Professor of Mathematics in 1669. In 1687, he expounded his theory of universal gravitation in Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica. He was appointed master of the London Mint and became a wealthy man; he sat in Parliament, wrote widely on the Bible and other subjects, and was president of the Royal Society from 1703 to the end of his life.

There is little doubt that Newton showed high-functioning autism/Asperger Syndrome. He certainly displayed the traits of autistic psychopathology, described by Hans Asperger in 1944, with his odd, naive, inappropriate emotional detachment, egocentricity, and hypersensitivity, in addition to his circumscribed interests. Biographies of the genius give many accounts of his strange behavior, although earlier biographers tended to perpetuate myths about his iconic status (see Note 2). A modern biography by Michael White, Isaac Newton: The Last Sorcerer, debunks many of the myths and shows how Newton conspired in his own mythologizing, ever careful of his self-image and legacy. He had good reason to do so. Despite being the founder of modern mechanical theory grounded in logic, he was also an alchemist and an advocate of Arianism (see Note 3) — facts he was at pains to conceal in the climate of religious intolerance that swept England during the seventeenth century — and was fascinated by numerology and chronology.

Family and Early Life

Newton was born on Christmas day, 1642, in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire; he was educated locally and at Trinity College, Cambridge. His father was illiterate and died before Newton's birth but managed to leave his family well provided for. Legend has it that Newton was tiny at birth and required the greatest of care to survive his first few days of life. When he was 3 years old, his mother remarried and went to live with her new husband, an aging local rector, leaving Isaac in the care of his grandparents and making frequent but short visits to see him. The trauma of maternal separation had a profound effect on him, according to White. Newton despised his stepfather, and his resentment of his mother scarcely abated when she returned 11 years later with three children in tow, following the death of her second husband. Little is known about her relationship with her son except that she made him sole heir to the estate and wrote him a letter while he was at Cambridge expressing her maternal love.

Like many geniuses throughout history, Newton performed poorly at school, played truant, and was close to the bottom of his class. Only after he was sent away to the King’s School in nearby Grantham and lodged with a local apothecary with an extensive library did an interest in learning awake in him. As the mathematician Ramanujan (who is believed to have had Asperger Syndrome) was captivated as a boy by books on mathematics (Fitzgerald, 2004), so Newton was captivated when 13 years old by The Mysteries of Nature and Art by John Bate. The book was to have a lasting influence on him. It showed how to make machines and devices, with an emphasis on elements of experimentation and practical skills.

Newton was clearly a natural autodidact, like Wittgenstein and other geniuses. When he first arrived at Trinity College, he had a limited knowledge of mathematics — simple arithmetic, algebra, and a little trigonometry — but taught himself advanced mathematics in a few years. Many of the great minds, such as Darwin, Einstein, Ramanujan, and Wittgenstein, had only a rudimentary technical knowledge of their subjects when first entering universities. Those with Asperger Syndrome have a liking for facts, rules, and logic, and Newton was no exception. Like Wittgenstein, he had a profound interest in logic, which inevitably extended to calculation and mechanisms.

Social Behavior

Throughout his life, Newton showed severe impairment in reciprocal social interaction. White (1997) described him as “a secretive man, a man coiled in upon himself, detached from the world” (p. 2). As a child he was sober and quiet, and wasted little time playing with other boys. He has been described as a difficult man and a misanthropist. Newton showed a clear lack of desire to interact with peers. For long periods of his life, he was absorbed in his work at Cambridge and secluded from everyday affairs. He was a recluse and a loner — at Cambridge he was an extreme loner. There is no record of any personal interaction with other students, except that he may have loathed his roommate.

John Gribbin, quoted in On Giants’ Shoulders (Bragg, 1998), sums up his estimation of Newton as a weird man who made few friends. During his time at the university Newton did little to encourage others to like him: His decision to become a money lender could not have endeared him to people, although he was not excessively interested in money, despite achieving fame and fortune as a result of his scientific discoveries; avarice was out of keeping with his religious feelings. Even as an alchemist, he was not driven by the prospect of material reward. In reality he was a small-time money lender and in later life, when living in comparative comfort, gave generously to the many relatives seeking financial help. At Trinity College he lived a life of austerity, in much the same way that Ludwig Wittgenstein did. White (1997) noted that Newton existed in a permanent state of self-imposed isolation. Living in austerity and isolation in order to pursue their interests is a recurring feature of those with autism and genius.

On first arriving at Cambridge, Newton was treated as a social inferior and made to empty bedpans and clean the rooms of the more privileged students to earn his keep (White, 1997). His mother did little to ease his financial burden, in the hope that her son would abandon his university education. His humiliation, according to White, served only to strengthen his lifelong desire for improved social status and influence.

The inability, and lack of desire, to interact with peers was most acute in Newton's treatment of students. Like many people of genius, he was a poor teacher. According to White (1997), he never enjoyed teaching and cared little for his students: “Like many men of his stature, he found it difficult to bring his intellect into line with young students or those of far lesser ability, even for a short period” (p. 164). Indeed, Newton's unpopularity as a lecturer is legendary. After he was appointed Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, “not a single student showed up for Newton's second lecture, and throughout almost every lecture for the next seventeen years (when he gave up all pretence of teaching and turned his position into a sinecure) Newton talked to an empty room, listening merely to his own voice bouncing back at him’ (White, 1997, p. 164).

Newton showed a lack of appreciation of social cues. There are numerous anecdotes about how he often forgot the company he was with. When he had guests he might go into another room for a bottle of wine, forget why he had gone there, sit down and proceed to work for hours, forgetting all about the guests (Bragg, 1998). This is very like Wittgenstein, who would keep his companions waiting for hours, having forgotten about them while absorbed in his work.

Throughout his life, Newton shared close relationships — many of which were not sustained — with only a handful of people. As is often the way with people with Asperger Syndrome, he formed a relationship with a man of similar temperament, John Wickins at Cambridge (White, 1997). Wickins worked as his laboratory assistant for many years and they shared rooms for 20 years, but little is known about their time together. Afterwards Wickins became a clergyman and had little contact with Newton. White (1997) speculates that given that nature of their “clinical break,” it is possible that they had a sexual relationship, although there is no hard evidence to this effect (p. 235).

Similarly, Newton formed an intimate relationship with Nicholas Fatio de Duillier, a young Swiss mathematician who came to England with Cartesian ideas but was “soon drawn into Newton's mechanical universe” (White, 1997, pp. 238-239). Their relationship lasted four years. White speculated that Fatio charmed the older man with a “blend of intelligence, flattery and imagination which interacted with a nascent and largely suppressed sexual interest on Newton's part” (p. 245). It is highly likely that Newton was a repressed homosexual, and by some twist of fate Fatio managed to bring this out. There is no evidence of any physical contact, but Newton’s emotional defenses had been breached, making him extremely vulnerable. According to White, the intense relationship ended in June 1693 and was never resumed.

White (1997) also suggested that Newton may have had a romantic liaison with a woman named Lady Norris and possibly proposed to her. However, given Newton's highly secretive nature, it is difficult to substantiate the claim. The only evidence comes from John Conduitt, who supposedly copied a letter of proposal from an original by Newton.

In later life Newton did show some capacity to form fulfilling and lasting relationships, especially with John Locke, the British empirical philosopher. Newton and Locke had an immediate affinity for each other, whereby Locke became his intellectual companion. In part it sprang from a meeting of minds: Locke’s philosophy claimed that all human knowledge was derived from experience. Not surprisingly, his relationship with Newton was quite intense at an intellectual level; together they were later seen as the “twin pillars upon which the Age of Reason was built” (White, 1997, p. 235). Newton opened up to the older Locke, going so far as to reveal his alchemical practices to him.

Newton networked very cleverly, through the impressive power of his intellect rather than with natural charm. Throughout his life there were men who acted as father-figures and career-enhancers for him, such as the mathematician Isaac Barrow, the philosopher Henry More, and the Cambridge fellow Humphrey Babington (White, 1997).

Narrow Interests/Obsessiveness

As a young boy, Newton was absent-minded and had a capacity to become absorbed in his interests, such as reading. White (1997) noted that he had a tendency to read a book under a tree rather than watch for straying sheep as he ought to have done. On one occasion he returned from the local town with only a halter in his hand, oblivious to the horse that had slipped it.

Newton showed extraordinary intensity of focus in his work. For him, truth did not come from social relationships but from silent and unbroken meditation, as noted by John Maynard Keynes (1947). Newton was the type of person who elevated the principles of hard work and dedication to learning as the highest hopes of humanity. He could concentrate on a single problem for many decades, and revealed, “I keep the subject constantly before me, till the first dawnings open slowly, by little and little, into the full and clear light” (White, 1997, p. 85). In contrast to Wittgenstein, who read little and paraded his ignorance of other philosophers’ work, Newton studied his subject both intensively and extensively. The reason was that he was searching for the “frame of nature” or a unified theory of matter. In this respect he left no stone unturned in the pursuit of truth, even believing that alchemy, too, offered a way.

Because of his all-absorbing interest in science, he had no time for literature, art, or music; he was similar to Wittgenstein in deploring time being wasted when it could be spent on work. His assistant, Humphrey Newton (no relation), reported, “I never saw him take any recreation or pastime ... thinking all hours lost that were not spent in his studies, to which he kept so close that he seldom left his chamber” (White, 1997, p. 214). When in the pursuit of knowledge, Newton neglected to eat, as described by Humphrey:

So intent, so serious [was he] ... that he ate very sparingly, nay, sometimes he forgot to eat at all, so that going into his chamber, I have found his mess untouched. When I have reminded him, he would reply: Have I! Then making to the table, would eat a bit or two standing, for I cannot say, I ever saw him sit at table by himself. (White, 1997, p. 214)

Similarly, he would continue to work “without any concern for or seeming want of his night’s sleep.” Humphrey recounted his sleeping habits:

He very rarely went to bed, till 2 or 3 of the clock, sometimes not till 5 or 6, lying about 4 or 5 hours, especially at spring & fall of the leaf, at which times he used to imply about 6 weeks in his laboratory, the fire scarcely going out either night or day, he sitting up one night, as I did another until he had finished his chemical experiments, in the performance of which he was the most accurate, strict, exact. What his aim might be, I was not able to penetrate into ... (White, 1997, p. 213)

Like Wittgenstein, Newton pushed himself to the utmost limits. In completing the Principia, he worked himself to the point of obsession and to the brink of self-destruction. From an early age, he had a reckless disregard for his own safety. For example, when conducting experiments on color, he almost suffered permanent blindness after looking at the sun for long periods. Blindness could equally have resulted when he performed risky experiments on light and vision: For example, he once wrote that he had put a small dagger “between my eye and the bone as near to the backside of my eye as I could: & pressing my eye with the end of it (so as to make the curvature in my eye) there appeared several white, dark and colored circles” (White, 1997, p. 61).

Routines/Control

Newton was a meticulous record-keeper in every aspect of his life: diary entries, financial accounts, and copious notebooks on experiments. White (1997) noted that Newton was obsessive from an early age; while an apothecary’s apprentice, he kept “meticulous records of his experiments and noted any recipes he came across in the apothecary’s books” (p. 132). Like Wittgenstein, he made numerous drafts of his work: There are often 20 or 30 drafts of a single document among his papers.

The necessity of mathematical rules and logic underpinning his empirical science was crucial for Newton. However, he applied such rules not only in science but also in alchemy and biblical prophecy. He established 15 rules to analyze the text of the Bible, whereby one key approach was to reduce everything to its simplest form.

Like many with Asperger Syndrome, Newton had no interest in sports or pastimes and wanted to control peers by having them focus on his intellectual interests. In doing so he displayed how neurotic, obsessional, introverted, hypersensitive, competitive, egotistical, arrogant, and dislikable he could be. Indeed, he demanded total control over his peers, believing himself to be the foremost scientist of the period, and was ruthless with anyone who crossed his path.

He was also quite paranoid and secretive. He became embroiled in intense rivalry with his peers and had tremendous ill-feeling toward the scientific community, especially in his early dealings with the Royal Society. This was not dissimilar to Wittgenstein’s total disregard for Cambridge philosophers in the early twentieth century. Newton engaged in ruthless competitive conflicts with the astronomer John Flamsteed, the philosopher Gottfried Leibniz, and the scientist Robert Hooke. With Leibniz, as we have seen, the issue centered on who invented calculus first. Newton, in paranoid fashion, believed that it was he and not Leibniz, as Leibniz claimed. In reality, they developed it independently, oblivious to each other’s work at the time.

He was also hypersensitive to criticism and could not stand being challenged over his ideas. Like Wittgenstein, he was slow to publish his work until he thought it well developed, suspicious that others would plagiarize and misinterpret it for their own advantage. After he realized the basic concept of gravity, 20 years passed before the publication of Principia Mathematica in 1687.

In 1672, when elected a member of the Royal Society, Newton first came into contact with the scientific elite of England. He and Hooke clashed professionally and personally and remained bitter enemies until Hooke’s death in 1703. Newton abruptly resigned from the Society when he deemed that its method of verifying ideas through observation ran counter to his own, and resumed his monastic lifestyle at Cambridge. Years later, when he took up presidency of the Society, he exerted absolute control and was extremely manipulative in making or breaking the careers of his contemporaries.

White (1997) claimed that the control he exerted over organizations that he was involved with made them an extension of his own personality. Following relentless arguments with Flamsteed, then Royal Astronomer, Newton removed Flamsteed’s name from various parts of the Principia, thus diminishing his significant contribution to the work. In this respect, Newton displayed an autistic aggression in his dealing with peers: “(Newton’s aim was) to make me come under him ... force me to comply with his humors, and flatter him ... (and) have all things in his own power, to spoil or sink them; that he might force me to second his designs and applaud him” (White, 1997, p. 323; emphasis in Flamsteed’s original).

As Newton grew older, his power and influence grew. In his eyes, knowledge was power, and, “Having now garnered the power and influence he had sought throughout his life, his ascension to the status of icon appeared unstoppable” (White, 1997, p. 293). It is not surprising that he exercised complete domination of the Royal Society. His extraordinary combativeness and misanthropy, however, were not reserved for his academic peers. When working at the Royal Mint, he soon came into conflict with the governor of the Tower, Lord Lucas. He wielded considerable power at the Mint in his dealings with “clippers” and counterfeiters. The practice of counterfeiting and coin clipping (shaving off a small portion of precious metal for profit) was widespread at the time, and Newton was extremely energetic and merciless in putting counterfeiters to the gallows. He was a harsh taskmaster and drove the workers, although he drove himself equally hard. At this time, he worked about 16 hours a day, with the same focused energy he showed in his experimental work.

Newton was a supreme egotist, obsessed with his self-image and notions of immortality. According to White (1997), he made sure that the “image he cultivated would seep into recollections and memoirs long after he had been replaced” at the Royal Society (p. 308). Having reached the pinnacle of his academic career as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, Newton sought other ways to accrue power and influence, which culminated in a knighthood in 1705. He acquired a taste for official responsibility after he opposed James II’s attempts to foist Catholicism on the thoroughly Protestant Cambridge. Consequently, he twice became a member of Parliament representing Cambridge at Westminster, as well as master of the Royal Mint. He also became president of the Royal Society, and revitalized the then flagging institution.

Language and Humor

In Newton's case, there is a lack of clear evidence of speech and language problems and delayed development. Typically for someone with Asperger Syndrome, he had difficulties with humor and was not given to mirth. His assistant Humphrey Newton claimed that he saw Newton laugh only once.

Nonverbal Behavior

There is no clear evidence that Newton displayed any limited use of gestures or clumsy/gauche body language or that he had inappropriate facial expressions, although White (1997) has noted his brooding, dark, piercing eyes and “stern gaze” (p. 294). Certainly, from portraits he appears to have had a peculiar, stiff gaze. It seems probable that he showed limited facial expression, considering that his assistant saw him laugh only once. Nonetheless, Newton evidently had an extraordinary effect on people. Despite his natural misanthropy, he had the power to impress, as those with genius often do.

Lack of Empathy

Newton showed a clear lack of empathy, coupled with vindictiveness and insensitivity toward his peers, in part due to intense rivalry. “For him, time did not heal: his bitterness and resentment merely festered. He had almost no capacity for forgiveness” (White, 1997, p. 340). His extreme rivalry with the scientist Robert Hooke permitted only a begrudging acknowledgment of the latter’s collaboration on the experiments on light. Newton's celebrated words, “if I have seen further it is by standing on ye shoulders of giants” were double-edged, according to White. The statement is often read as a compliment to scientists who had gone before him, but in fact was a jab at Hooke - a prolific scientist himself - who was so “stooped and physically deformed that he had the appearance of a dwarf” (White, p. 187). White noted that the comment showed the “truly spiteful, uncompromising and razor-sharp viciousness” of Newton’s character.

Autistic Superego

Newton possibly had an “autistic superego,” as evident from accounts of his early life. Like Wittgenstein, he was preoccupied with sin and wrote out confessions of “felonies against the lord.” One of these lists consisted of 45 transgressions, including “threatening my father and mother Smith to burn them and the house over them” and “wishing death and hoping it to some.” Other misdemeanors included “refusing to go to the close at my mother’s command,” “striking many,” “peevishness with my mother,” “punching my sister,” and “falling out with the servants” (White, 1997, pp. 17, 25).

Visual-Spatial Ability

Newton showed the excellent visuo-spatial ability commonly found in those with autism. Like Wittgenstein, he could draw well. Stukeley gave an account of his early drawings: “Sir Isaac furnished his whole room with pictures of his own making, which probably he copied from prints, as well as from life” (White, 1997, p. 21).

Newton's visual-spatial ability was particularly evident in his passion for model building as a boy — a suitably insular pastime for someone who apparently had no friends at school. He was a good practical experimenter, starting in his childhood when he made quite sophisticated toys. A working “windmill” driven by mice running round a treadmill amazed his contemporaries for years afterward. He is best remembered for building kites. According to Brewster (1855), Newton apparently flew them with lanterns attached. Later he single-handedly built a telescope, which was central to his calculation of gravity. Undoubtedly, he was a prime example of a mechanical man. Interestingly, as a boy Wittgenstein built a sewing machine and had a highly developed visual-spatial ability, too. Both were interested in light and color: Newton had a lifelong fascination with the color crimson. Indeed Newton's first experiments were probably investigations of the nature of light (White, 1997).

Religious Disposition

The religious disposition commonly found in great minds, such as those of Wittgenstein and Einstein, was evident in Newton too — he had a profound interest in religion and spent a lifetime studying biblical prophecy. Gribbin claimed that he became an unorthodox kind of Christian who studied the bible obsessively (cited in Bragg, 1998). Although Newton saw the Creator's presence in everything, he was more interested in the spiritual dimension of religion than in its received wisdoms, and this applied equally to his obsession with alchemy:

The spiritual element of the experiment was in fact the key to the true alchemist’s philosophy ... for many alchemists, it was the practical process that was in fact the allegory and their search was really for the elixir or the philosophers’ stone within them ... following a path to enlightenment - allowing themselves to be transmuted into “gold.” This is why the alchemist placed such importance on “purity of spirit” and spent long years in preparation for the task of transmutation before so much as touching a crucible. (White, 1997, p. 127; emphasis in original; see Note 4)

Not surprisingly given the climate of the time, Brewster (1855) described Newton’s writings on alchemy as the obvious production of a fool and a knave. Newton's work as an alchemist was anathema to the traditional world of science and to society in general. More seriously, attempting to transmute base metals into gold was a capital offence. According to White (1997), the story that Newton's inspiration for the theory of gravity was a falling apple was a fabrication and almost certainly told in order to suppress the fact that much of the inspiration came from his subsequent alchemical work.

Newton wrote a “long and clumsy book” entitled The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended, published posthumously in 1728 by Conduitt (White, 1997, p. 155). In it his fascination with “numerology, time-scales and even biblical prophecy” is evident. His chronology put the death of Christ at 34 CE; the end of Church of Rome’s spiritual domination at 1638-1639; the second coming of Christ at 1948; the cleansing of the sanctuary, which would usher in a thousand years of peace, at 2370-2436. White (1997) pointed out that Newton, “the towering intellect, the pioneer and father of modern science, can now stand alongside Newton the mystic, the emotionally desiccated obsessive and the self-proclaimed, but deluded, discoverer of the philosophers’ stone — divested but undiminished” (p. 5). Likening Newton to a mystic is resonant with some views of Wittgenstein.

Puritanism offered Newton a world of strict emotional and sensual limits, where he did not have to find excuses for his inability to love. Rather, the twin pillars of God and knowledge replaced all other needs (White, 1997). His pious manner was mixed with an honesty commonly found in individuals with Asperger Syndrome. After years of squabbling between Newton and Leibniz over who had first discovered calculus, a committee was established to settle the dispute. Newton controlled the committee and even wrote its report, yet his fierce selfimportance made him deny this later. It was a “rare blatant lie from Newton, the most pious of men,” according to White (1997, p. 336).

Motor Clumsiness

There is no evidence that Newton had motor clumsiness. More than likely he had great fine-motor skills because of his adeptness at model making. His handwriting was very tiny; the implications of this are not clear.

Narcissism and Grandiosity

Newton showed many features of a narcissistic personality — grandiosity, hypersensitivity to other people’s assessment of him, lack of empathy, difficulty in deriving satisfaction from his work, and interpersonal exploitation with arrogant or haughty behavior and attitudes. As mentioned, he was paranoid and constantly fearful of people stealing his work. He was also a hypochondriac, given to concocting remedies for himself and others. These characteristics are quite common in persons with Asperger Syndrome and genius.

Newton had grandiose ideas, particularly in terms of mythologizing his birth. That it occurred on Christmas day, along with the miraculous nature of his survival, held potent meaning for him. Furthermore, his contribution to science was dependent on his service to God; indeed, his very vocation was to “unravel the laws governing God’s universe” (White, 1997, pp. 64-65). This is close to views expressed by the mathematician Paul Erdés and Albert Einstein with respect to their work.

Newton showed a sense of entitlement to favorable treatment. For example, he sought a special dispensation from Charles II that would allow him to remain as professor at Cambridge but without taking holy orders as was required at the time. Again, this is not dissimilar to Wittgenstein’s demands.

Mental Illness

Newton went through an episode of severe paranoid psychosis in 1693. It was temporary and believed to have been precipitated by the breakup of his intimate relationship with Fatio de Duillier. Nothing supports the view that it was chemically induced or work related. Newton wrote to Samuel Pepys, “I am extremely troubled at the embroilment I am in, and have neither ate or slept well this twelve month, nor have my former consistency of mind” (White, 1997, p. 247). While psychotic, Newton accused Locke of outlandish conduct: trying to “embroil me with women & by other means I was so much affected with it as that when one told me you were sickly & would not live I answered that it was better if you were dead” (White, 1997, p. 248). He recovered from the psychotic episode.

Originality of Thought

Newton's originality of thought marked his credentials as a genius. Newton was a complex and enigmatic genius. Gribbin noted that the essential feature of Newton's work is not what he did but the way he did it. The key point is that he invented what is now the scientific method, the idea of doing experiments to test theories and hypotheses (cited in Bragg, 1998). White (1997) claimed that Newton's great achievement was to clarify and to bring together the individual breakthroughs of men like Galileo, Descartes, and Kepler, and in doing so he produced a general overview — a set of laws and rules that has given modern physics a definite structure. Nonetheless, Newton’s work demonstrates an extremely high level of mathematical creativity, which lies at the core of his genius.

Newton, in developing an intellectual foundation for science, stands in opposition to Wittgenstein, who adopted an anti-theoretical view of the world. Despite international recognition following the publication of the Principia, Newton felt that his life’s work was unfinished. He continued to pursue a unified theory of matter until the final days of his life.

Newton's approach was to reduce everything to its simplest form, whether in science or biblical prophecy. The concept of simplicity was similarly espoused by Wittgenstein in his philosophy (Fitzgerald, 2004) and Einstein in his physics; as a framework it features strongly in the work of many geniuses.

Conclusion

There is no doubt that this complex and enigmatic genius was a perpetual loner, imposed extreme control on himself and others, and had the condition now called high-functioning autism or Asperger Syndrome. Newton was the greatest genius of the past one thousand years, and one can see the link between his psychopathological traits and his enormous creativity (Fitzgerald, 1999). His creative output was helped by his social detachment and his obsessive, driven approach to his work.

- Michael Fitzgerald, Former Professor of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry