Cambridge students have voted the physicist and mathematician Isaac Newton as the Greatest Cantabrigian of all time. Newton discovered universal gravitation and the three laws of motion; built the first practical reflecting telescope; discovered the spectrum of colours in white light; and developed the theory of calculus.

Over 900 votes were cast in the poll on Varsity’s website. Charles Darwin came a close second with the poet Lord Byron coming third. Jawaharlal Nehru, the Indian Prime Minister who helped win independence from the British Empire, came a convincing fourth.

In reaction to the result Lord Rees of Ludlow, Master of Trinity College and Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics, claimed “I’m delighted that Newton topped the poll. Indeed he would probably win a poll as the number one scientific intellect of the last millennium.”

However, Rees continued that Newton’s personal qualities did not match his genius.  “He was an unappealing character – obsessive and solitary when young; vain and vindictive in his later years. Darwin would have been a far more pleasant person to meet!”

Trinity College did particularly well in the poll, as was noticed by Prof. Michael Proctor who told Varsity “As a Fellow of Trinity and keen rower I’m very pleased to see Trinity come First and Third in this contest!” Byron, who came third, led a rather different University career to the distinguished Newton, famously keeping a bear in his room in protest against not being allowed to keep dogs.

Darwin was a similarly undistinguished student, and is according to Prof. Forrester “a great comfort to undergraduates who don’t seem to have much of a direction in life.”

What qualifies greatness is a difficult question. Despite being a Mathematics Professor, Prof. Iserles was willing to state his prizing of an individual’s artistic achievements over scientific in reaction to our poll. He told us “personally I would have voted for Lord Byron. Had Newton not been born somebody else would have sooner or later invented the calculus and discovered the laws of motion. But had Lord Byron not written ‘Childe Harold’, nobody ever would have written it.”

In a 2005 poll by the Royal Society, scientists and the general public were asked whether Newton or Einstein had a greater influence on the history of science, and Newton won convincingly. Newton was an intensely religious man, believing in secret to be the son of God, and oddly spent far more time in his later life writing on religion than on the natural sciences he is now remembered for.