Lots of us have nicknames. My fellow science blogger apparently goes by Rob, although at work, he’s strictly Robert. Some of you may even have a pet name for your partner that you’d rather not cop to. But do you have a private name for yourself? According to a PBS interview with historian Bill Newman, Isaac Newton did, and it was awesome — Jehovah Sanctus Unus, or Jehovah, the Great One.

It turns out the man better known for his universal law of gravitation, three laws of motion and mind-blowing intellect was a bit of an oddity. Aren’t we all, Newton? In his spare time, and he didn’t have much because the guy worked way too hard, he pursued alchemy and Arianism. (I’m going to have to save the Arianism stuff for another post).

Alchemy is the idea that you can transform something ordinary into something special, like lead into gold, say. It wasn’t such a crazy notion for the 17th century, as the people at The Newton Project write, and it does tie into the modern field of chemistry. The crazy part was all the dramatic and mystical stuff that went along with alchemy, like the elaborate codes alchemists use. For example, back then an alchemist might have casually mentioned “the menstrual blood of the sordid whore,” according to Newman. What he was actually talking about was the metalline form of the element antimony. Of course.

Newton took it a step further and fashioned several alchemical code names for himself, one of which was Jehovah Sanctus Unus. Maybe as his devoted fan and economist John Maynard Keynes said, “Newton was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians.”

Read about the great man and more at HowStuffWorks.com:
How Newton’s Laws of Motion Work
How Isaac Newton Worked
How Geniuses Work
How Gold Works

Note: Since I published this, some readers have pointed out that a better translation of Jehovah Sanctus Unus is Jehovah, the Holy One, rather than Jehovah, the Great One. Thanks for the correction.