Isaac and Amanda: A Play in Ten Scenes

By Herbert Hauptman and Arthur Ziffer

The play Isaac and Amanda is among other things a love story about Isaac Newton and a woman named Amanda. It also contains material about the conflicts that Newton had with the scientist Robert Hooke and the mathematician Leibniz. The latter conflict deals with the issue of who should receive credit for the discovery of Calculus. Furthermore, it deals with that period of Newtons life when he was an official in the Mint (the equivalent in the United States of the Treasury Department) trying to solve Britains currency problems and his difficulties with the master counterfeiter Challoner and especially Challoners wife. Finally, it brings up the issue of Newtons year when he was so depressed that some people say he had a nervous breakdown. Some of the material in Isaac and Amanda is to be found in the play On the Shoulders of Giants, written by the same authors.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Feb 24, 2012
• ISBN: 9781468552843

Herbert Hauptman

Arthur Ziffer is a mathematician and has had a lifelong interest in Isaac Newton. He lives in New York City. Herbert Hauptman won a Nobel prize (the first mathematician to do so) in Chemistry for his work applying advanced mathematics to crystallography. Herbert Hauptman passed away in 2011.

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© 2012 Arthur Ziffer and Herbert Hauptman. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 2/21/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4685-5284-3 (e)

ISBN: 978-1-4685-5285-0 (sc)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012903053

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Contents

Cast of Characters

Scene 1

Scene 2

Scene 3

Scene 4

Scene 5

Scene 6

Scene 7

Scene 8

Scene 9

Scene 10

Some of the material in this play is taken from the already published play

On the Shoulders of Giants

by

Arthur Ziffer

and

Herbert Hauptman

Cast of Characters

Catherine Barton, a niece of Isaac Newton

Clarissa Challoner, wife of the master counterfeiter Challoner

Robert Hooke, of Hooke’s Law in Elasticity

Leibniz, German Mathematician and Philosopher

Isaac Newton

Amanda Taggert, a young, attractive, wealthy widow

SETTING: All the scenes take place in the living room of Isaac Newton’s home in London.

Scene 1

AT RISE: Newton is talking to the audience.

NEWTON

My name is Isaac Newton. I know some of you, upon hearing my name, will want to get up and leave, thinking that I am going to bore you with talk of mathematics and physics. Such is not the case. I am going to tell you about that period of my life when I decided to give up on the private life of being a scholar at Cambridge and entered into the public life of a government official in London. There were two reasons that this came about. Firstly, it was as a reward for my work in science, culminating as it did in the publication of the Principia. The Principia, for those of you who do not know, contains my Laws of Motion, which explain the motions of the planets. The second reason, or maybe this should be the first, was that the powers that be thought that I could be of some help in solving some of the problems that were plaguing English currency.

It did me no harm, of course, to be an associate of Charles Montagu, also known as Lord Halifax, in obtaining my position; although I certainly felt that I deserved it. The position was that of being Warden of the Mint, which was the second in command to the Master of the Mint, which I became several years later. The position of Warden was mostly concerned with the prosecution of counterfeiters and other criminals who were trying to profit through various illegal operations involving English currency.

Actually, what I am going to talk about is my relationships with women. Most people think, and I wonder why so many people are interested in this more than my scientific work, that I have had no relationships with women in the conventional sense. In Cambridge, it was easy to