Isaac Newton (1642-1727) is probably Britain's greatest-ever scientist. Born in Lincolnshire (in the year the greatest man of science before him, Galileo, had died), Newton was Cambridge-educated, and cut himself off from the world when the plague hit England in the 1660s, and then began to study, in earnest, gravitational theories. He was a mathematical genius, and the world of science wasn't to see a man of his ilk again until Einstein.

- Paul Rance/booksmusicfilmstv.com.