IF it’s a myth that he dabbled in alchemy then it’s a pretty enduring myth.
IF it’s a myth that he dabbled in alchemy then it’s a pretty enduring myth.
Newton treated alchemy as a science and treated it with the same seriousness he used for mathematics.
At the time, alchemy was a respectable art and pretty much the primitive ancestor of what we call modern day chemistry.
In fact, alchemy slowly evolved into what is now modern day chemistry as we learned the physical science underpinnings of molecular composition and behavior of chemical reactions which allowed us to predict what was and was not possible in the world of alchemy.
In fact, Newton’s invention of calculus did much to advance alchemy into the physical science of chemistry
BTW, with modern knowledge it really is possible to transmute lead into gold, it’s just not very economical.