At Cambridge Newton was the very model of an absent-minded professor. His amanuensis, Humphrey Newton (no relative), wrote that he never knew Newton "to take any recreation or pastime either in riding out to take the air,walking, rowing or any other exercise whatever, thinking all hours lost that were not spent in his studies". He often worked until two or three o’clock in the morning, ate sparingly and some times forgot to eat altogether. When reminded that he had not eaten, he would go to the table and "eat a bite or two standing". Newton rarely dined in the college hall; when he did, he was apt to appear "with shoes down at heels, stockings untied, surplice on, and his head scarcely combed". It was said that he often delivered his lectures to an empty hall, apparently with as much satisfaction as if the room had been full of students.
在劍橋,牛頓是個十分典型的健忘教授。他的抄寫員漢弗萊·牛頓(并非他的親戚)曾寫道,他從未聽說牛頓"參加過什么娛樂、休閑活動,比如騎馬兜風、散散步、劃船或者任何其他體育鍛煉,他認為不是花在研究上的時光都是白白浪費掉的"。牛頓常常工作到清晨兩三點鐘,吃得很少,有時壓根兒忘記吃飯。別人提醒他還未吃飯,他便走到桌子旁邊"站著吃一兩口"。牛頓很少去學院的食堂就餐,難得去了,又往往見他"著一雙后跟磨掉的鞋子,穿一雙沒有系好的襪子,披著白外套,頭也幾乎沒梳理過"。據說,他常常對著空無一人的大廳演講,神情顯然像是廳里坐滿了學生一般得意。
After the controversy, Newton withdrew from the public eye as a scientist. He served the University as its representative in Parliament and worked away in private at chemistry and alchemy, theology, physics and mathematics. He became acquainted with Leibnitz, but refused to give his great contemporary any exact information about his discoveries in mathematics. Today it is generally agreed that the calculus was discovered more or less independently by both Newton and Leibnitz, but the two men and their partisans quarreled acrimoniously over priority, and Newton accused Leibnitz of plagiarism. Newton conceived a jealous proprietary interest in every subject he studied, and almost every achievement of his creative life was accompanied by some quarrel.
那場爭論結束后,作為科學家的牛頓從公眾的視線中消失了。他代表劍橋大學擔任議會議員,不過私下還在繼續研究化學和煉金術、神學、物理以 及數學。他結識了萊布尼茲,但不肯向這位偉大的同時代人透露自己在數學方面一些發現的確切信息。今天人們普遍認為,微積分是牛頓和萊布尼茲各自基本上獨立發現的,但是這兩個人及其支持者曾為誰的發現居前激烈爭吵,牛頓還指控萊布尼茲剽竊。牛頓將他研究的每門學科都視為己有,提防被人占去 一份;他創造性生涯中差不多每取得一項成就便會隨著發生一些爭吵。
來源:可可英語 http://www.ccdyzl.cn/daxue/201612/467718.shtml