Investigating the site of Newton’s laboratory in Trinity College, Cambridge

Abstract

It is not generally known that over the course of some thirty years, Isaac Newton carried out around four hundred chemical experiments in a private laboratory located in the walled garden immediately below his rooms in Trinity College, Cambridge. The exact location of his laboratory has long been a source of conjecture and this article describes a survey undertaken to determine both the possible site of the laboratory as well as that of the rubbish pit in which Newton would have disposed of the waste materials generated in his chemical experiments. The results are believed to be of sufficient interest to justify continuation of the investigation