In 1667, Issac Newton invented calculus, the mathematical mother of the modern world and the bane of teenagers everywhere, except for nerds of course. He was only 25 years old, you know, that same age you spent “trying to find yourself” or whatever. Anyways, fucking Isaac Newton. The guy who had the apple hit him on the head, which is complete bullshit by the way. The guy that invented the cat door because he got sick of his damn cat always wanting to go outside. Yeah, that guy. Anyways, don’t stop reading. I know I said calculus, but trust me, the rest of this has nothing to do with math. Nope, not a bit. This isn’t about calculus at all. This is about what good old Isaac did with the rest of his life.
Now one might think that being a math genius means that you end up automatically getting a job at a university or something. Well, if that's what you think, then you're absolutely right. For the next 26 years Newton hung out in the halls of higher learning, mostly Cambridge, just mathing that shit up. We're going to skip over all those years, because again, this isn't about math. What we won't skip over is the fact that throughout the same time period, Isaac was also fiddling around with alchemy, you know, the whole psuedo-science of trying to turn lead into gold which was super popular amongst various idiots back then. For Isaac, alchemy was more a hobby, but like anybody with a crazy hobby, he probably dreamed of it making him fantastically rich. Isaac never did get fabulously rich, but he did get a very bad case of mercury poisoning, which caused severe insomnia, paranoia, confusion, and the shakes. By the end of his tenure at Cambridge, he had gone from being the greatest mathematical genius of his time to an easily confused man who spent most of his time writing about religion, including claiming that he could mathematically prove that the apocalypse was going happen in 2060. Basically, the man needed a new gig.
Isaac first tried his hand at politics, theoretically the perfect place for a religion obsessed man with severe mercury poisoning. He was elected to the English Parliament, but did little during his term of office beyond complaining about a cold draught and demanding all the windows be closed. His one real accomplishment was to convince a group of idiots that a local nearby house wasn’t haunted, not because of any sound reasoning, but simply because it was Isaac fucking Newton telling them that they were being dumb asses. It goes without saying that Isaac’s political gig didn’t last long since even politicians are expected to at least pretend to do something.
Isaac's next job was working for the royal mint, since you know, the leap from preeminent mathematician to government clerk makes a lot of sense. The job, given to him by a friend as a favor, was basically supposed to be him just sitting on his ass and collecting a paycheck. However, not knowing this, Isaac went at his new job with a gusto. England at the time had a huge problem with the counterfeiting of silver coins. Which was surprising given that the punishment for being caught involved being drug by a horse, hanged, gutted, having your balls cut off (if you had them), and then being cut into four roughly equal sized parts. Isaac proved to be very good at hunting out counterfeiters, thanks to him apparently being one of the few people working for the mint who could differentiate silver from other metals. He took great delight in catching counterfeiters, but even more delight in their conviction and execution. Isaac was so good at his job that he was made head of the royal mint only a few years after being hired. Isaac loved his job. He oversaw the interrogations of all suspects (fun fact, interrogation back then most definitely meant torture), and even at times put on a disguise to go undercover on the mean streets of London (which probably involved him going from bar to bar jovially asking people if they, you know, like to do some counterfeiting or something, because he was cool and, you know, totally not a cop).
Isaac kept his job at the royal mint for thirty years, during which time he lived rather comfortably on his high salary (you don't want the head of the royal mint underpaid you know), though he did lose a lot of money speculating in the stock market. Isaac also managed to get a little mathing in on the side here and there, though again, we’re not going to talk about that. Good old Isaac finally died at age 84 after a large gallstone blocked his urinary track, meaning he couldn't pee, resulting in a deadly infection. Oh yeah, he also died a virgin, probably should have mentioned that earlier.
Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sir_Isaac_Newton._Mezzotint_after_J._Smith,_1712,_after_Sir_Wellcome_V0004248.jpg