The Plague Year: Isaac Newton's Impossible Summer
Cover Image Prompt
Please generate a new wide-landscape cover illustration in 16:9 format. A colorful, dramatic wide-landscape illustration in a 17th century English Baroque style showing Isaac Newton during his "miracle year" of 1665-1666. Newton, a young man of 23 with long dark hair, sits under an apple tree in the garden of Woolsthorpe Manor. He's surrounded by the symbols of his discoveries: a glass prism splits a beam of sunlight into a rainbow spectrum across the scene, mathematical equations float in the air around him, and a red apple hangs prominently from the branch above his head, about to fall. In his hands, Newton holds a notebook filled with calculations. His expression is intense—genius mixed with something slightly unsettling, hinting at his difficult personality. The background shows the modest stone manor house under dramatic Baroque lighting: dark storm clouds part to reveal golden sunlight streaming down onto Newton, suggesting divine inspiration or the "light" of understanding breaking through. Scattered around him are objects representing his discoveries: a small telescope, compass, and ink pot. In the far distance, barely visible, the spires of Cambridge University rise—closed due to plague, forcing Newton into this productive isolation. The color palette combines warm golden light against cooler shadows, with the prismatic rainbow providing vivid color accents. The overall mood should be "brilliant but brooding"—capturing both Newton's world-changing genius and his intense, obsessive nature. Text space should be available at the top for the title "The Plague Year."Narrative Prompt
Please generate a detailed narrative for a new graphic novel about Isaac Newton that is engaging and appropriate for teenagers. The target audience is high school students studying introductory physics. The story should capture Newton's extraordinary genius AND his strange, difficult personality. He was brilliant, obsessive, vindictive, and possibly the pettiest genius in history. Make him a fascinating, complex character—not a plaster saint. Key story elements: - His rough childhood: born premature on Christmas 1642, father died before birth, mother remarried and abandoned him with grandparents, which scarred him for life - His obsessive personality at Cambridge: barely ate, barely slept, drove himself to nervous breakdowns - The plague year 1665-1666: Cambridge closed, Newton went home to Woolsthorpe Manor, and in 18 months invented calculus, discovered the laws of motion, developed his theory of gravity, and proved that white light contains all colors - The famous apple story (probably somewhat true) - His experiments with prisms—buying one at a country fair and using it to prove that white light is actually a mixture of all colors - His 30-year feud with Robert Hooke (Newton refused to publish his greatest work until Hooke died) - His priority war with Leibniz over who invented calculus (Newton was vicious) - His later career as Warden of the Mint, personally interrogating and prosecuting counterfeiters - His famous (possibly passive-aggressive) quote about "standing on shoulders" The tone should be fun and engaging while showing that genius doesn't require being a nice person—and that even weird, difficult people can change the world. I am going to request a series of image for a new graphic novel about Isaac Newton for high school students. All the images must be generated using a wide-landscape format where the width to height ration is 16:9. When you describe an image, make sure to mention that it should be a colorful, bright wide-landscape illustration in a 17th century English style with dramatic Baroque lighting and period-accurate details.Prologue – The Boy Nobody Wanted
On Christmas Day 1642, in a small farmhouse in Woolsthorpe, England, a baby was born so tiny he could fit inside a quart pot. The doctors said he wouldn't survive the night.
His father, also named Isaac Newton, had died three months earlier. His mother Hannah would soon remarry and abandon the boy to be raised by his grandmother. Young Isaac grew up lonely, angry, and convinced that no one would ever love him.
He was probably right. Isaac Newton would grow up to become the greatest scientific genius in history—and also one of the most difficult, vindictive, and thoroughly weird human beings who ever lived.
But first, there was a plague to survive.
Image Prompt
Image 1: Please generate a new wide-landscape illustration. A colorful, bright wide-landscape illustration in a 17th century English domestic style showing Woolsthorpe Manor on Christmas Day, 1642. Snow covers the Lincolnshire countryside. Inside the modest stone farmhouse, a tiny premature baby—Isaac Newton—lies in a small wooden cradle near a fireplace. His grandmother and a worried midwife hover nearby. Through the frosted window, a single star shines brightly (a subtle reference to his future in astronomy). The scene is intimate but melancholy—no father present, mother exhausted. The tiny baby's survival seems unlikely. The scene conveys the unpromising start of history's greatest scientist.Chapter 1 – The Loneliest Kid in England
Isaac's childhood was miserable. When he was three, his mother married a wealthy minister named Barnabas Smith—but the deal was that Isaac couldn't come with her. She moved to another village and started a new family, leaving Isaac with his grandmother.
For eight years, Isaac saw his mother only occasionally. He grew up bitter, suspicious, and filled with rage. At age 19, he made a list of his sins—and included "threatening to burn my stepfather and mother and their house."
The good news? He channeled all that anger into something productive: understanding literally everything.
At the King's School in Grantham, Isaac was initially a terrible student—until a bully kicked him. Isaac challenged the boy to a fight, won, and then decided to beat him academically too. He rose to top of the class out of pure spite.
Image Prompt
Image 2: Please generate a new wide-landscape illustration. A colorful, bright wide-landscape illustration in a 17th century English rural style showing young Isaac Newton, about 10 years old, standing alone outside Woolsthorpe Manor. His mother's carriage disappears down the road in the background—she's leaving him again. His grandmother watches from the doorway. Isaac's expression shows a mix of hurt and cold determination. He holds a handmade notebook filled with drawings and observations. The Lincolnshire landscape stretches flat and lonely under a gray sky. A sundial casts a shadow—young Isaac is already obsessed with measuring time. The scene conveys the emotional damage that would fuel his obsessive genius.Chapter 2 – The Student Who Never Slept
In 1661, Isaac entered Trinity College, Cambridge. He was supposed to study law. Instead, he discovered mathematics—and promptly lost his mind.
Newton barely ate. He barely slept. He forgot meals so often that his cat grew fat eating his abandoned food. He would work on problems for days without stopping, once going 36 hours without realizing he hadn't gone to bed.
His professors barely noticed him. Newton wasn't interested in their outdated curriculum anyway. He taught himself the latest mathematics from books, scribbling notes in the margins until he understood—and then exceeded—everything the authors knew.
By age 22, Isaac Newton had already surpassed every mathematician in Europe.
Nobody knew it yet. Newton didn't tell anyone.
Image Prompt
Image 3: Please generate a new wide-landscape illustration. A colorful, bright wide-landscape illustration in a 17th century Cambridge academic style showing Newton's student room at Trinity College around 1663. Newton, pale and intense, works by candlelight surrounded by tottering stacks of books and papers. A plate of untouched food sits on a chair; a fat cat eats from another abandoned plate. Mathematical calculations cover every surface—walls, floor, even the ceiling. Through the Gothic window, dawn is breaking—he's worked through another night. His eyes are red-rimmed but blazing with intensity. Other students' rooms visible through an open door show normal social activity. The scene conveys obsessive genius bordering on self-destruction.Chapter 3 – The Plague Shuts Everything Down
In 1665, the bubonic plague swept through England. London lost 100,000 people—a quarter of its population. Cambridge University closed its doors and sent students home.
For most students, this was a disaster. For Newton, it was the greatest gift imaginable: 18 months of uninterrupted time to think, with no lectures, no social obligations, and no distractions.
He returned to Woolsthorpe Manor—the same farmhouse where he'd been born—and began the most productive period in the history of science.
What he accomplished in those 18 months would take other scientists centuries to match.
Image Prompt
Image 4: Please generate a new wide-landscape illustration. A colorful, bright wide-landscape illustration in a 17th century English pandemic style split into two contrasting scenes. On the left: London during the plague—carts of bodies, doors marked with red crosses, people fleeing with their belongings. Dark, smoky, terrifying. On the right: Newton at peaceful Woolsthorpe Manor, setting up experiments in the garden, completely unconcerned by the apocalypse. Books and prisms and papers surround him. A servant watches nervously from a distance. The contrast is stark: catastrophe for most, opportunity for Newton. The scene conveys how historical disasters can create unexpected space for genius.Chapter 4 – Inventing Calculus (NBD)
Newton had a problem. The mathematics that existed wasn't powerful enough to describe the questions he wanted to answer. How do things move? How do they accelerate? How do you calculate curves and changes?
So he invented new mathematics. Just... made it up.
He called it "fluxions." We call it calculus—the mathematical language of change, motion, and rates. It would become essential for everything from physics to engineering to economics.
Newton was 23 years old.
He didn't publish it. Didn't tell anyone. Just kept working.
(This would cause MASSIVE problems later. But we'll get there.)
Image Prompt
Image 5: Please generate a new wide-landscape illustration. A colorful, bright wide-landscape illustration in a 17th century English study style showing Newton inventing calculus at Woolsthorpe around 1666. He sits at a wooden desk covered with papers filled with mathematical notation—integral signs, derivatives, curves. A candle burns low (he's been at this for hours). On one side of the desk, pages show the OLD mathematics, frustrated and crossed out. On the other side, the NEW mathematics takes shape—elegant curves being analyzed, areas under curves being calculated. Newton's quill moves rapidly across the page. His expression is intense, almost feverish. The scene captures the creation of one of humanity's most powerful intellectual tools.Chapter 5 – The Apple (Probably)
Here's the famous story: Newton was sitting in the garden at Woolsthorpe when an apple fell from a tree. Watching it fall, he suddenly wondered: does the same force that pulls the apple to the ground also keep the Moon in orbit?
Did this actually happen? Maybe! Newton told the story multiple times late in life, so there's probably some truth to it. What we know for certain is that during the plague year, Newton figured out the mathematics of universal gravitation—the idea that every object in the universe attracts every other object with a force proportional to their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.
The same gravity that pulls an apple down holds planets in their orbits. Everything attracts everything. The universe is held together by invisible threads of force.
Newton was 24.
Image Prompt
Image 6: Please generate a new wide-landscape illustration. A colorful, bright wide-landscape illustration in a 17th century English pastoral style showing the famous apple moment at Woolsthorpe Manor. Newton sits beneath a gnarled apple tree, notebook in hand, watching an apple fall. But the illustration goes further: dotted lines trace the apple's path downward, then extend upward to show the Moon in its orbit—the same force at work. A thought bubble or translucent overlay shows Newton's mental leap: apple and Moon connected by curves representing gravitational force. The orchard is peaceful, the afternoon golden, but the image captures a universe-changing insight. The scene balances the legendary story with its profound implications.Chapter 6 – Rainbows in a Dark Room
Newton's next obsession was light. Everyone "knew" that prisms colored white light—that the glass somehow added color. Newton thought this was nonsense.
He bought a prism at a country fair and took it to his room at Woolsthorpe. He covered the windows, leaving only a tiny hole for a beam of sunlight. When the light passed through the prism, it spread into a rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet.
Then came the genius move. Newton put a second prism in the path of just the blue light. If prisms added color, the blue light should change. But it stayed blue.
White light wasn't pure—it was a mixture of all colors. Prisms didn't add color; they separated what was already there.
Newton had discovered that rainbows had been hiding in sunlight all along.
Image Prompt
Image 7: Please generate a new wide-landscape illustration. A colorful, bright wide-landscape illustration in a 17th century English experimental style showing Newton's famous prism experiment in his darkened room at Woolsthorpe. Heavy curtains cover the windows except for one small hole where a beam of brilliant white sunlight enters. The beam strikes a glass prism and fans out into a spectacular rainbow spectrum on the opposite wall. Newton, silhouetted in the darkness, holds a second prism in the path of the blue light, testing his theory. Scientific instruments and notebooks lie nearby. The rainbow colors are vivid and beautiful against the dark room. His expression shows the satisfaction of proving his hypothesis. The scene captures the beauty of controlled experimentation.Chapter 7 – Back to Cambridge (Eventually)
In 1667, the plague subsided and Cambridge reopened. Newton returned with notebooks full of revolutionary discoveries—calculus, gravity, optics—and told almost no one.
Why not? Newton was terrified of criticism. He had seen other scientists attacked for their ideas, and his emotional wounds from childhood made rejection unbearable. Better to keep his discoveries secret than risk being mocked.
He did eventually publish his work on light and colors. The response? Robert Hooke, a famous scientist and massive ego, criticized it harshly.
Newton was FURIOUS. He swore he would never publish again. And he developed a grudge against Hooke that would last for decades.
Image Prompt
Image 8: Please generate a new wide-landscape illustration. A colorful, bright wide-landscape illustration in a 17th century English academic style showing Newton returning to Cambridge in 1667. He walks through the great gate of Trinity College carrying bundles of notebooks—his plague-year discoveries. Other students chat and socialize normally; Newton walks alone, focused inward. The Gothic spires of Cambridge rise behind him. His expression is guarded, secretive—he carries the future of physics in his arms, but trusts no one with it. A split image shows his imagination: on one side, acclaim and recognition; on the other, mockery and criticism (symbolized by Hooke's sneering face). The scene conveys the paranoia that kept genius hidden.Chapter 8 – The Hooke Feud Begins
Robert Hooke was curator of experiments at the Royal Society—basically, the professional scientist of his era. He was brilliant, prickly, and convinced that everyone was stealing his ideas.
When Newton published his theory of light, Hooke claimed he'd had similar ideas first. He criticized Newton's experiments and demanded credit. Newton responded by...completely losing it.
Their letters became increasingly vicious. Newton threatened to quit science entirely. He became so paranoid that he refused to publish his gravity work for nearly 20 years.
Finally, astronomer Edmund Halley (of Halley's Comet fame) visited Newton and asked what shape an orbit would be under an inverse-square gravitational force. Newton immediately replied: "An ellipse. I calculated it years ago."
Halley was stunned. "Can you show me the proof?"
Newton couldn't find his notes. He promised to redo the calculations—and ended up writing the most important scientific book ever published.
Image Prompt
Image 9: Please generate a new wide-landscape illustration. A colorful, bright wide-landscape illustration in a 17th century English satirical style showing the Newton-Hooke feud. The scene shows the Royal Society meeting hall with scientists in wigs debating. Newton and Hooke stand on opposite sides, expressions hostile, papers brandished like weapons. Other scientists look uncomfortable. Thought bubbles show their mutual disdain: Newton sees Hooke as a jealous hack; Hooke sees Newton as an arrogant thief. Scattered on tables are prism experiments, microscopes (Hooke's specialty), and mathematical papers. Edmund Halley tries to mediate in the middle, looking exhausted. The scene captures the pettiness that can infect even great minds.Chapter 9 – The Principia
In 1687, Newton finally published Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica—the Principia for short. It was the most important scientific book ever written.
In it, Newton laid out: - The three laws of motion (inertia, F=ma, action-reaction) - The law of universal gravitation - Proofs that these laws explain planetary orbits, tides, comets, and essentially all motion in the universe
Hooke immediately claimed that Newton had stolen the inverse-square law from him. Newton was so angry that he went through the manuscript and deleted every reference to Hooke he could find.
The "shoulders of giants" quote that Newton became famous for? Some historians think it was a dig at Hooke, who was short.
Newton held grudges forever.
Image Prompt
Image 10: Please generate a new wide-landscape illustration. A colorful, bright wide-landscape illustration in a late 17th century English academic/publishing style showing the creation of the Principia. Newton sits at a desk surrounded by the massive manuscript, making final corrections with a quill. Diagrams of planetary orbits, comets, and gravitational calculations are visible on the pages. Edmund Halley stands nearby, supervising the printing process—he funded the book's publication. A printing press operates in the background. The book's title page "PHILOSOPHIÆ NATURALIS PRINCIPIA MATHEMATICA" is prominently shown. Newton's expression shows grim satisfaction—vindication at last. In the corner, a small portrait of Hooke has been crossed out. The scene captures the birth of modern physics.Chapter 10 – The Leibniz War
Newton wasn't done feuding. In the 1690s, German mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz published his own version of calculus—developed independently, but using different notation.
Newton was convinced Leibniz had stolen his ideas. Leibniz was convinced he'd developed them himself. What followed was one of the nastiest priority disputes in scientific history.
Newton, as President of the Royal Society, appointed a "neutral" committee to investigate. He secretly wrote the committee's report himself. It concluded that Leibniz was a plagiarist.
The feud damaged both men's reputations and set back mathematics for years, as English and Continental mathematicians refused to read each other's work.
Newton had become exactly the kind of petty, vindictive authority figure he'd once rebelled against.
Image Prompt
Image 11: Please generate a new wide-landscape illustration. A colorful, bright wide-landscape illustration in an early 18th century European satirical style showing the Newton-Leibniz calculus war. The scene is staged like a battlefield: on the English side, Newton commands forces armed with his "fluxions" notation; on the German side, Leibniz leads troops carrying his integral and derivative symbols. Papers fly like missiles between them. Other mathematicians are caught in the crossfire, looking distressed. A tattered flag reads "WHO INVENTED CALCULUS?" In the foreground, a young student looks confused at two different notation systems. The scene is comic but points to the real damage done by the feud.Chapter 11 – The Mint and the Counterfeiters
In 1696, Newton got a new job: Warden of the Royal Mint. It was supposed to be a ceremonial position, a nice retirement for a famous scientist.
Newton treated it like a war.
England's currency was being destroyed by counterfeiters and coin-clippers. Newton personally investigated over 100 counterfeiters, interrogating them in taverns and prisons. He was ruthless—several were hanged based on his evidence.
His most famous target was William Chaloner, a master counterfeiter who had the audacity to accuse the Mint itself of corruption. Newton spent three years building a case against him. Chaloner was eventually hanged at Tyburn.
Newton watched.
The man who unlocked the secrets of the universe also had a taste for vengeance.
Image Prompt
Image 12: Please generate a new wide-landscape illustration. A colorful, bright wide-landscape illustration in an early 18th century English crime/justice style showing Newton as Warden of the Mint. The scene is split: on the left, Newton interrogates a terrified counterfeiter in a dim tavern, ledgers of evidence spread before him, his expression merciless. On the right, the Royal Mint operates with precision—coins being stamped, quality being verified. Newton in both scenes wears formal attire befitting his new station. In the background, a wanted poster shows William Chaloner. The atmosphere is darker than previous scenes—Newton has become an enforcer. The scene reveals the unexpected final chapter of a scientific genius.Chapter 12 – The Price of Genius
Isaac Newton died on March 31, 1727, at age 84. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, among kings and heroes. He had become the most famous scientist in the world.
But what kind of person was he? His servant said Newton laughed only once in his life—when someone asked him what use geometry was.
He never married. He had few friends. He feuded with almost everyone who challenged him. He may have died a virgin. He spent his later years obsessed with alchemy and trying to decode hidden prophecies in the Bible.
Yet his discoveries form the foundation of physics. Every engineer, every astronaut, every smartphone GPS uses Newton's laws. He saw further than anyone before—even if he stood on shoulders he refused to acknowledge.
Genius doesn't require being nice. But maybe, just maybe, Newton's lonely childhood and burning resentments were part of what drove him to understand the universe—and to care more about being right than being loved.
Image Prompt
Image 13: Please generate a new wide-landscape illustration. A colorful, bright wide-landscape illustration blending 18th century and modern elements showing Newton's complex legacy. The center shows Newton's tomb in Westminster Abbey, with mourners paying respects. Branching from this: on one side, his scientific legacy—rockets launching using his laws, satellites orbiting, apples falling, prisms splitting light, calculus equations enabling modern technology. On the other side, his personal legacy—an empty chair at a table, burned letters from feuds, the faces of Hooke and Leibniz faded in memory. Above it all, Newton's famous quote floats: "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Is it humble? Or is it a final jab at his short enemy Hooke? The scene captures the brilliant, difficult, essential Newton.Epilogue – What Can We Learn from a Difficult Genius?
Newton's life teaches us that greatness is complicated:
| Newton's Trait | The Upside | The Downside |
|---|---|---|
| Obsessive focus | Invented calculus, gravity, optics in 18 months | Forgot to eat, had breakdowns, alienated everyone |
| Couldn't tolerate criticism | Perfected his work before publishing | Hid discoveries for decades; science was delayed |
| Held grudges forever | Never gave up on problems | Wasted years on feuds; hurt other scientists |
| Secretive and suspicious | Protected his work from theft | Caused priority disputes that damaged his reputation |
| Lonely childhood | Drove him to prove himself through achievement | Left him unable to form close relationships |
| Demand for total control | Reformed the Royal Mint; prosecuted counterfeiters | Became the kind of authority figure he once resented |
Bottom line: You don't have to be a nice person to change the world. But Newton might have been happier—and done even more—if he'd learned to trust people.
Final Image Prompt
Image 14: Please generate a new wide-landscape illustration. A colorful, bright wide-landscape illustration blending 17th century and modern elements with an inspiring but honest tone. A diverse group of modern physics students works in a lab: one drops objects to test gravitational acceleration, another shines light through a prism, a third works on calculus problems. On the wall, a portrait of Newton watches—but he's depicted with a slightly wry, difficult expression, not as a plaster saint. One student has a thought bubble: "He was brilliant AND a jerk?" A teacher points to a poster of Newton's three laws. Through the window, an apple tree is visible. The scene conveys that we can learn from Newton's science without having to copy his personality—and that even flawed people can achieve extraordinary things.Call to Action
Isaac Newton was brilliant, obsessive, petty, vindictive, lonely, and absolutely essential to modern science. He:
- Invented calculus during a pandemic lockdown
- Discovered the laws of motion and gravity
- Proved that white light contains all colors
- Held grudges for 30+ years
- Possibly invented the diss track (that "shoulders" quote is savage)
What can YOU take from Newton?
The good parts: - Use setbacks as opportunities (plague lockdown → greatest scientific year ever) - Don't accept "that's just how it is"—figure out why - Work on problems until you solve them, even if it takes years - Create new tools if the existing ones aren't good enough
Maybe skip: - The grudges - The paranoia - The loneliness - The counterfeiter-hunting (unless that's your thing)
Newton proved that the universe follows mathematical laws—that nature can be understood. That's his real gift: not just his equations, but the proof that equations can describe reality.
The apple fell. Newton asked why. And nothing was ever the same.
"If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." —Isaac Newton (possibly being passive-aggressive about Robert Hooke)
"I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people." —Also Newton, after losing money in a stock market crash
References
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Isaac Newton | Biography, Facts, Discoveries, Laws, & Inventions - Updated 2024 - Britannica - Comprehensive biography covering Newton's difficult childhood, his "miracle year" of discoveries, his feuds, and his later work at the Royal Mint.
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Isaac Newton: Who He Was, Why Apples Are Falling - 2024 - National Geographic Education - Student-friendly explanation of Newton's laws of motion and universal gravitation with the famous apple story.
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Newton's Life and Work at a Glance - Ongoing - PBS NOVA - Interactive timeline and resources from the NOVA documentary about Newton's life, including his secret interests in alchemy and biblical prophecy.
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Isaac Newton - 2024 - U.S. Energy Information Administration - Learn how Newton's discoveries about motion and gravity laid the foundation for understanding energy and how things move.