The published versions of Newton's life story in the eighteenth century, being largely based on Fontenelle's ‘Éloge’ (1727), were strikingly similar. While new material had been published, for example by Birch and Turnor, this was yet to be incorporated into a biographical narrative. It was for the following century to interpret manuscript evidence, the crucial factor behind the disputes over Newton's character and biography discussed in the following chapters. Unlike Turnor's Collections, Jean-Baptiste Biot's article on Newton, published in the Biographie universelle (1822), incorporated new material into a significant reinterpretation of Newton's life and work. It has, therefore, been called ‘the first modern critical study of Newton's life and career’. It was the first biography to point to the possibility that Newton suffered a breakdown around the years 1692–3, and therefore to suggest that his genius might have been attended by problems. In doing this Biot both responded and contributed to debates over the meaning and manifestations of genius that have been described in the Introduction. Consideration of the contents of Biot's biography must therefore focus on the controversial topics of Newton's breakdown and his role in the dispute with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz over who had priority in the invention of the calculus. However, to understand Biot's approach fully it is also necessary to consider his essay in the context of the waning influence of the previously dominant ‘Laplacian Programme’, to which he was connected. Biot saw the research of the Laplacians as falling within a Newtonian tradition and accused the rising generation of turning their backs on the heritage that he celebrated in this text.

The English translation of Biot's article was published by the SDUK in 1829.