Summary
A new book, Ricardo’s Dream by Nat Dyer, reveals that Sir Isaac Newton’s wealth was closely tied to the transatlantic slave trade during his tenure as master of the mint at the Bank of England.
Newton profited from gold mined by enslaved Africans in Brazil, much of which was converted into British currency under his oversight, earning him a fee for each coin minted.
While Newton’s scientific legacy remains untarnished, the book highlights his financial entanglement with slavery, a common thread among Britain’s banking and finance elites of the era.
The summary in the body says his scientific legacy remains untarnished, so it has nothing to do with his math.
However, much like America’s Founding Fathers, it is important to account for the amount that important European and European-descended people in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries (really even the 20th) benefited from the transatlantic slave trade. An accounting of history’s wrongs is necessary.