USA – Scientists at the Chemical Heritage Foundation (USA) have found a manuscript by Isaac Newton in which the formula of the Philosopher’s Stone is shown to transform any metal into gold or silver.

The philosopher’s stone is an alchemical substance that is said to be able to convert base metals such as lead, iron or bronze in precious metals.

This document English physicist famous has been in secretive places for most of the twentieth century and, in February, the Chemical Heritage Foundation obtained the text through an auction, according to the article published in The Washington Post and CNN.

That’s when the experts realized that the document of the seventeenth century is a handwritten copy made by Isaac Newton on the procedure itself created by the alchemist Harvard George Starkey to make “Sophick mercury”, a substance considered a key ingredient for the Philosopher’s Stone.

James Voelkel, curator of books of the Chemical Heritage Foundation, said that the importance of the manuscript is that it helps us understand the alchemical readings Newton and provides us with evidence of another of his laboratory methodologies.

Newton, considered one of the fathers of physics, also studied alchemy exhaustively.  It is estimated that, throughout his life, he wrote a million words in this practice that preceded chemistry and is today considered a pseudoscience.

Specifically, this medieval science sought to turn base metals into gold. The alchemists believed that adding an ignoble molten material for example lead and a small piece of philosopher’s stone can turn the material into a completely different element.

The alchemists were able to carry out a lot of significant manipulations, for instance taking an alloy and separating gold and silver from it.  In the context of his time, turning lead into gold Newton could have explained something about how it is composed of matter, according to Voelkel.