The next event in our regular series of events on Tuesdays in Second Life will be a presentation and discussion with Professor Thomas Levenson, Professor of Science Writing at MIT.

In 1695, Isaac Newton—already renowned as the greatest mind of his age—made a surprising career change. He left quiet Cambridge, where he had lived for thirty years and made his earth-shattering discoveries, and moved to London to take up the post of Warden of His Majesty’s Mint.

Newton was preceded to the city by a genius of another kind, the budding criminal William Chaloner. Thanks to his preternatural skills as a counterfeiter, Chaloner was rapidly rising in London’s highly competitive underworld, at a time when organized law enforcement was all but unknown and money in the modern sense was just coming into being. Then he crossed paths with the formidable new warden. In the courts and streets of London—and amid the tremors of a world being transformed by the ideas Newton himself had set in motion—the two played out an epic game of cat and mouse.

Professor Thomas Levenson is the author of Newton and the Counterfeiter, a new book revealing Newton’s little known career as a detective. Professor Levenson is a professor of science writing at MIT and the author of three previous books Einstein in Berlin, Measure for Measure and Ice Time, as well as the producer of 10 documentaries for which he has won numerous awards.

Professor Levenson will be Nature Publishing Group’s guest in Second Life on Tuesday 7th July at 10am PDT where he will talk about Isaac Newton and his own career and take questions from the audience. All very welcome!

Title: Newton and the Counterfeiter
Date: Tuesday 7th July, 10am PST / 1pm EST / 6pm BST
Speaker: Professor Thomas Levenson, MIT
Location: Nature Amphitheatre, Second Life
Contact: Joanna Wombat / j.scott@nature.com