Isaac Newton’s private papers, inherited by his niece, Catherine Barton, then passed to the Earl of Portsmouth, who married his daughter, and then examined in 1777 by Bishop Samuel Horsley, who “viewed the contents with horror and slammed the lid,” were eventually donated to Cambridge University. The University cataloged them in 1888, only to discover that a large body of work, approximately one million words, was devoted to alchemy and theology! Newton, in fact, devoted a good part of his life to alchemy rather than physics and science. This portion of the material was deemed of little interest and returned to the Earls of Portsmouth.
