I am at present deciphering Isaac Newton's chymical laboratory notebooks and manuscripts, the subject of a recent BBC/NOVA documentary, much of which was filmed at IU. Newton spent some thirty years working on chymistry, and yet the goals of his project and their relationship to his physics and religion remain obscure. One thing is clear, however. Newton
based his research heavily on the work of "Eirenaeus Philalethes" or George Starkey, about whom I have written extensively. Hence my background in Starkey's work gives me an important Ariadne's thread into the labyrinth of Newton's alchemy, and one that I am busily exploiting. At the same time, Newton left clear directions for making chymical furnaces and other apparatus,
as well as processes for the star
regulus of antimony, a copper-antimony alloy called "the net," and other products
of the laboratory.

He also wrote a manuscript discussing metallic "vegetation," the formation of dendrites from salts and metals. To Newton, the fact that metals could be made to grow in a flask was a sign that they possessed a sort of life, and could therefore be made to ferment, putrefy, and ultimately multiply.

With the aid of Cathrine Reck and the IU Chemistry Department, I am presently replicating a number of these processes in order to determine the precise nature of Newton's research. With the help of the IU Pottery Studio, I've also built a working replica of one of Newton's laboratory furnaces. I am also involved in "The Newton Project," an initiative originating at Imperial College London to prepare a digital edition of Newton's alchemical and theological manuscripts.

See our progress in the lab.