Light is shed on Newton's zeal for alchemy

Sir Isaac Newton knew he was a genius and didn't like wasting his time. Born on December 25, 1642, the great English physicist and mathematician rarely socialized or traveled far from home. He didn't play sports or a musical instrument. He was unmarried, and had no known romantic liaisons.

No, it wasn't easy being Newton. Not only did he hammer out the universal laws of motion and gravitational attraction, formulating equations that are still used today to plot the trajectories of space rovers bound for Mars; and not only did he discover the spectral properties of light and invent calculus. Sir Isaac had a whole other full-time career, a parallel intellectual passion that he kept largely hidden from view: alchemy.

The scope and details of that after-hours enterprise are only now becoming clear, as science historians go over Newton's extensive writings on alchemy �?a million-plus words from the Newtonian archives that had been largely ignored.