The Bloodline of Giants: Why Newton Had No Heirs and Einstein’s Descendants Chose Ordinary Lives

I

On March 20, 1727, Isaac Newton died at Kensington. His body was buried in Westminster Abbey. The funeral procession included nobles, scholars, and politicians. But among the pallbearers, not one was named Newton.

He had no children.

This was no secret. Newton never married and left no direct descendants. His estate, including manuscripts, books, alchemical notes, and theological papers, eventually passed to his niece Catherine Barton and her husband John Conduitt. The famous “Portsmouth Papers” descend through Catherine’s line.

But the surname Newton did not disappear. His collateral relatives, the line of his half-sister Hannah Smith and other branches of the Newton family in Lincolnshire, continue to this day. In 2013, a descendant named Philip Newton launched a global search. He hoped to gather Newton family descendants scattered around the world for a reunion in Lincolnshire. Responses came from the United States, Canada, and Australia. Most were not scientists, and none reached Newton’s heights.

That is normal. The descendants of most great figures in history eventually return to ordinary life. Bloodlines dilute. A surname becomes an ordinary surname.

But the fact that Newton had no direct descendants was later given many extra explanations. The most widespread one says Newton did not marry because he was gay.

This claim appeared in some twentieth-century biographies. It was based mainly on his correspondence with the Swiss mathematician Fatio de Duillier. But if you actually read the full letters, and then read Newton’s Latin theological manuscripts, the claim collapses.

II

Who was Fatio? A Swiss mathematics enthusiast, passionate about alchemy, who corresponded with Newton in the 1690s. In September 1692, Fatio became seriously ill and wrote to Newton. He said that after returning from Cambridge he had caught a severe cold, which turned into a lung infection. The day before, he had suddenly felt a sharp pain. Perhaps an abscess or pustule in the lower lobe of his left lung had burst. He felt he was dying. If the fever had not been so severe, he would have told Newton more about alchemy. He hoped that after his death, Newton would become friends with his brother.

Newton’s reply was this:

Sir,

I have received the books, and last night your letter. Its contents moved me more than I can express. I beg you to seek medical advice as soon as possible. If you need money, I will assist. I deeply agree with your judgment of your brother. If acquaintance with him may benefit him, I will do what I can. I only wish you may recover and bring this about. But in case of the worst, please tell me how to send letters or parcels to him, and describe his disposition in detail. I especially want to know whether he has a talent for science, or only for worldly affairs. Sir, I pray for your recovery.

Your most sincere,
faithful friend,
Isaac Newton

The first two sentences are polite. Newton wrote to Locke in the same way: “How extremely glad I was to hear from you.” The third sentence is even more tactful. I deeply agree with your judgment of your brother. If my acquaintance can benefit him, I will do what I can.

Then the polite talk ends. Newton says: in case you really do die, please write and tell me how to contact your brother. Please describe his disposition in detail. I especially want to know whether he has a talent for science, or only for worldly affairs.

What Newton cared about was whether Fatio’s brother could continue to provide alchemical value after Fatio died. He did not ask Fatio to tell him in the next letter how his illness was going. He told Fatio to hurry up and introduce his brother’s scientific qualifications. He asked for detail.

Later Fatio proposed in a letter that he live next to Newton. Newton declined: my neighboring room is already occupied. Newton only wanted Fatio to live in Cambridge, for convenient collaboration and exchange. He never invited him to live with him. He never even planned to be neighbors. Later, when Newton lost interest in alchemy, he stopped paying attention to Fatio. He even privately mocked Fatio’s philosophical ability. “Mr. Newton and Mr. Halley ridiculed Mr. Fatio’s method of explaining gravity.”

Fatio also dreamed that Newton would let him edit the second edition of the Principia. He hinted as much to Huygens. Huygens wrote to Newton to ask. Newton had to admit that he had not heard from Newton for more than seven months.

Where exactly is the ambiguity in this letter? All I read is one thing. Newton cared about alchemy, not Fatio.

III

More crucial are Newton’s own theological manuscripts.

Of everything Newton wrote in his life, theology accounts for about fifty percent. Natural philosophy accounts for only about thirty percent. Considering that he burned many manuscripts before he died, the actual proportion of theology would only be higher. The research into which he truly poured his heart, and which he never interrupted, was theology. Natural philosophy was, to some extent, only what he did to qualify for a fellowship, to prove himself, and to respond to the problems of his age.

In these theological manuscripts, Newton’s attitude toward homosexual acts is mild to call disgust.

In “The Contradictions in the Moral Conduct and Behavior of Athanasius and His Followers,” he criticized the corruption of the early monks. He listed a series of sins, including passive sodomy. The word he used was “even”: “they even desired passive sodomy.” In Newton’s ranking, sodomy was more disgusting than digging up the corpses of dead women and lusting after them.

In the “Treatise on the Apocalypse,” he quotes Salvian’s critique of the Roman Empire. He repeatedly uses these words for homosexual acts: filth, abomination, effeminate corruption, defilement, pollution, fornication, dirtiness. He not only detested gay men. He also detested men who publicly declare themselves to be women. He detested men whose faces, gait, and clothing lacked masculinity. He wrote: “Men not only change their behavior and nature, but even change their faces, gait, clothing, and completely abandon every masculine feature.”

This is physical disgust, not just psychological homophobia. The kind of disgust that goes beyond a straight man in China saying gay men are shit-stirrers.

Some will say homophobes are closeted. But this logic has two problems. First, if homophobia equals being closeted, then heterosexuals are the minority. Second, Newton was not a man who hid himself out of fear. He was anti-Trinitarian, the greatest heretic of his time. If discovered, he could well have been burned or hanged. He dared oppose even that. Yet he was so afraid that he used so many dirty, filthy words to curse his own sexual orientation? That might happen to a brainwashed, obedient minister. It could not happen to Newton.

Reading Newton’s theological works feels like reading Lu Xun. A man full of grief and anger, with extremely strong values. Coincidentally, one abandoned medicine for literature. The other abandoned science for God. Both were celibate for many years.

IV

Newton did not marry for several reasons.

The Cambridge system is one reason. After the 1571 Act, fellows at Oxford and Cambridge colleges lost their positions if they married. Newton long served as a fellow of Trinity College and Lucasian Professor. His life trajectory overlapped heavily with this system. Leibniz and Hooke also never married. This is not a coincidence.

But the system was only an external constraint. In his youth Newton had a relationship with Catherine Storer. David Brewster’s memoir reports that Newton even seriously considered giving up academic research for marriage. He considered returning to the countryside as a minister, marrying, and having children. But in the end he chose to stay at Cambridge. Catherine later married someone else. Newton still visited her whenever he returned home.

Newton’s personality is another reason. His friend Locke instructed a young relative visiting Newton to treat him with the gentlest manners in the world. Locke said Newton was extremely difficult to deal with, and apt to take groundless suspicions. Whiston described Newton as having an extremely timid, cautious, and suspicious temperament. The first Astronomer Royal, Flamsteed, said Newton was suspicious by nature. He always imagined slanders against himself in other people’s words.

Such a man could hardly play the role of a gentle, stable, everyday partner in marriage. What he needed was solitude, thought, and research. He did not need household trivia and social obligations.

But the most fundamental reason may have been his vocation. Newton once told Hooke that he had become disillusioned with natural philosophy. He was determined to focus on other studies. He had already waved farewell to natural philosophy. What he truly delighted in was theology, what he considered useful to others.

In Newton’s confession at age nineteen, he wrote of impure thoughts, acts, and dreams. This shows he had normal sexual desire. But he chose to use work, reading, and thinking to redirect his attention. He wrote: “The way to preserve chastity is not to fight unclean thoughts, but to avoid them, by diverting the mind to some work, reading, or other thought. For if a man thinks constantly of chastity, he is in fact thinking constantly of women. Every battle with evil thoughts only leaves a deeper mark on the mind, making those thoughts return more frequently.”

This is a religious self-discipline. It is not a disguise for sexual orientation.

V

Newton had no direct descendants. Einstein did.

Einstein and his first wife Mileva Maric had three children. The fate of the eldest, Lieserl, remains a mystery. The second, Eduard, was long hospitalized with schizophrenia. The only one to continue the bloodline was the eldest son, Hans Albert Einstein. He was an outstanding engineer and professor who taught at the University of California, Berkeley.

Hans Albert had a son named Bernhard Caesar Einstein. Bernhard was an engineer and had five children. That is, Einstein has grandchildren and great-grandchildren alive.

Among Einstein’s known great-grandchildren is Paul Einstein, a professional violinist. In 2012 he performed in Wuhan. In an interview he said: “I am merely a musician, unrelated to science.” Another great-grandson, Thomas Martin Einstein, is a doctor. None inherited Einstein’s physics career. None lived under the shadow of the genius of the century.

Einstein also had an adopted granddaughter, Evelyn Einstein. She lived in poverty in her later years. She publicly complained that she had received not a penny of Einstein’s enormous estate. Einstein had bequeathed the literary and portrait rights to the Hebrew University. Evelyn died in 2011.

Einstein’s descendants are mostly low-key, ordinary, and far from public view. They did not become Einstein the Second. They did not try to use the surname for special status.

This may be a kind of luck. The halo of a giant is too strong. If his descendants want to live their own lives, the best way is to walk away.

VI

Newton had no direct descendants. Einstein had descendants, but they were ordinary. There are several common reasons.

Genes do not guarantee talent. Intelligence and creativity are not inherited as simply as height. Even if there is talent, it may not fall in the same field. Einstein’s son was an engineer. His grandson was an engineer. His great-grandchildren are a musician and a doctor. That is already quite good.

A surname is a halo, but also a pressure. As a descendant of Newton or Einstein, whatever you do, you will be compared with your ancestor. That comparison is often unfair. Choosing an ordinary life is, instead, a form of self-protection.

The times are different. In Newton’s age, scholarship was the privilege of a few. In Einstein’s age, science had already become professionalized. Today, the descendant of a great man can simply be an ordinary person. They do not have to bear the responsibility of continuing the thought.

Intellectual legacy is more important than bloodline. Newton had no direct descendants. But everyone who reads the Principia is his spiritual descendant. Einstein’s descendants did not become physicists. But everyone who uses GPS and understands relativity inherits his legacy.

Bloodlines dilute. Thought does not.

VII

Back to the reasons Newton did not marry.

The safest answer is this. He lived in a system that required fellows to be celibate. He was solitary, suspicious, and difficult. His true vocation was theology, not family. He chose a life of abstinence, focus, and self-discipline. There is no reliable evidence that he was gay. On the contrary, his theological manuscripts show strong disgust toward homosexual acts.

To attribute Newton’s celibacy simply to being gay ignores both the historical system he lived in and the theological world to which he devoted his life. Most of those who spread the claim that Newton was gay have never really read Newton’s Latin theological manuscripts. In this century, every biography that deals with Newton’s theological research holds that Newton was heterosexual. This includes Rob Iliffe, general editor of the Newton Project, and James Gleick, a Pulitzer Prize finalist. New material discovered by William Newman in 2019 further supports this.

In his later years Newton told his friend Stukeley that he hoped to spend the rest of his life back in Woolsthorpe. He especially wanted to buy a house near where Catherine had once lived. In old age Newton became sentimental. Sad stories often made him weep. Cruelty to people or animals shocked him. He especially liked the company of small children.

When people grow old, they think of home, of first love, of children.

This has nothing to do with sexual orientation. It is an old man who never married, looking back at the road he has walked.