Newton's career is a splendid example of the truth being stranger than fiction - when he moved onto the Royal Mint not only did he introduce significant innovations (milled edges on coins) but also went undercover to gather evidence against counterfeiters and then also ran the prosections of accused in court:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton#Royal_Mint

I'd love to see a TV adaptation of the Baroque Cycle keeping Newton as one of the main characters (there must be material there for a 100 or so shows).

Newton has been romanticized a bit by the math/science community.

The man was amazing, but thinking of him in our context of modern science/geekery is misleading.

That's true - modern scientists or geeks probably wouldn't stick a needle down the side of their eye to see what happened to their vision:

http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/exhibitions/Footprints_of_the_Lion/...

That... that makes me feel...

shudder

How about Robert Hooke drinking mercury. You know, for science.

http://www.strangescience.net/hooke.htm

> It may have been in response to the constant pressure from the society (and himself) that the experimentalist Hooke performed plenty of experiments on his own body. Many of his adventures in self-experimentation were dangerous; almost all of them were pretty disgusting. At various times, he medicated himself with botanical purgatives, botanical emetics, mercury, steel filings, tobacco, absinthe, and mineral water so foul that he found ammonium chloride preferable to it. Hooke obsessed over getting a good night's sleep and clearing out his lethargic digestive system. He often found his home remedies violently effective. He authored a recipe for turning pee into phosphorus salts, including an intermediate step of letting the effluvia sit "till it putrify and breed Worms."

And don't forget the occasional incredible intellectual flakiness - Newton has his Biblical theology & dating the apocalypse, we have fad diets...