T-ale as old as time: Isaac Newton’s beer mug resurfaces after 160 years

A scientist and a historian have teamed up to uncork the history of a centuries-old beer mug - or flagon - once owned by Sir Isaac Newton. They also suggest his great work Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687) may have been written with his home-made ink in which beer was a key ingredient.

A project that has itself been brewing since 2005, molecular biologist Carmichael Wallace and historian Stephen Snobelen, Professors at Dalhousie University and King’s College, Halifax, Nova Scotia, have spent nearly two decades piecing together the mug’s history through letters, genealogical records, family wills, magazines and newspapers and even a poem.

Newton gifted the wooden flagon - a type commonly used for beer-drinking - to John Wickins, his roommate of 20 years and occasional laboratory assistant, along with other belongings from his home at Trinity College, Cambridge. It was then passed down through generations, eventually landing in the hands of the Wallace family. The research has been published today in the Royal Society’s journal, Notes and Records.

Professor Stephen Snobelen said: “The mug was venerated by the Wickins and Hussey-Freke families because it was owned by Newton. It was a kind of holy relic.”

The paper also delves into Newton’s beer-related experiments including the study of fermentation, as well as his use of beer as a crucial ingredient in his homemade writing ink, still readable today in his notebooks and correspondence. Newton left behind two ink recipes, both likely penned in Newton’s beer-based ink.

Snobelen added: “Although chemical analysis of the ink in Newton’s voluminous manuscript corpus has yet to be carried out, many seventeenth-century authors used beer as a solvent in their home-made writing ink. Newton’s two surviving ink recipes confirm that he followed in this craft, at least while he was at Cambridge.”

As for Newton’s drinking habits, less can be known for certain. According to his lab assistant Humphrey Newton (no relation), Isaac drank beer and ale with meals and only sparingly. However, there are many references to beer, ale, cider and wine in Newton’s surviving papers, including household inventories; and in a letter to Henry Oldenburg, he asks about the best variety of apples to produce good cider (Newton mentions Red Streaks).

Keith Moore, Head of Library and Archives at the Royal Society, said: “We like to reflect upon past science, but a beery vision of Sir Isaac Newton is a new one for the Royal Society. According to his friends, the great man could be quite convivial, but I can’t see him drinking too much from his flagon while fermenting his head-spinning ideas - as a scientist, Newton was no mug.”

The wooden “pint flaggon” - as James Wickins, John Wickins’ grandson, called it in The Gentleman’s Magazine (1802) - was publicly exhibited on at least three occasions, last in 1865. Its exhibition at the Salisbury Exhibition of Local Industry and Art in 1852 inspired a poem:

Sir Izaak Newton’s Flagon too,
Perfect and polished met the view ...
– Frances Child, The Salisbury Exhibition. A poem (1852)

Newton was elected to the Royal Society in 1672, 12 years after its founding, and was President of the Royal Society from 1703 until his death in 1727.

This month from Tuesday 4 March, Newton’s flagon will be on public display for the first time in 160 years. Visitors to the Royal Society can see Newton’s beer mug, alongside items from the Royal Society’s historic archives, the Principia, and Newton’s death mask, that was prepared shortly after his death to serve as a likeness for sculptures.