Me & Isaac Newton

‘The universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper‘. This statement sets the tone for Michael Apted’s portrait of seven scientists. His film not only deals with these people’s scientific endeavours, but particularly with the source of their work, the experiences and vital questions that are the motivating force of their studies. In all seven of them, we recognise an eagerness to get a grip on life’s secrets, whether or not urged by social motives.From his early childhood, Steven Pinker was fascinated by the brain and the way it functions. With the advent of cognitive psychology in the seventies, it dawned on him that this was where his future lay. Physician Michio Kaku describes his theory about the cohesion in the universe as an attempt ‘to read the mind of God‘. The 81-year-old Nobel Prize winner Gertrude Elion also exhibits a certain religious consciousness, when she summarises her work as worming life’s secrets from nature. Biologist Patricia Wright bought a monkey for a pet, was fascinated by the animal and decided to examine the behaviour of monkeys in their aboriginal habitat. Maja Mataric studies artificial intelligence and thinks that biological axioms are not decisive: ‘everything can be programmed‘. For the Indian Ashok Gadgil, finally, his commitment to the dire situation in his country played an important role in inventing a wastewater treatment machine.