Excerpt from the Preface to The Calculus Wars

England was cold and Germany colder. I went to both countries in January of 2005 for about a week, leaving on one of those warm and sunny San Diego midwinter afternoons on a long flight memorable only for the fact that I ate two meals and watched two movies. Appropriately, they were Jerry Maguire and King Arthur.

I arrived the next morning to London, and when I stepped through customs, the British official who met me asked the customary purpose-of-my-trip question, but not as I had expected. She gave it a new spin, saying, "Are you here for business or tourism?" "Pleasure" was not an option, which took me completely by surprise, and I actually had to think about it for a second.

"Business," I said. "Work." I sounded unsure of myself, so I gave her a more confident, "I'm doing research for a book." Was that enough? She was scribbling something down and not really looking up at me. "It's about the invention of calculus, and I'm going to go to some of the places where Isaac Newton lived."

"Okay, okay, she said. "How long are you going to be in Great Britain?"

"A week," I said. "Well five days actually. Well a week sort of. I'm here for five days and then I fly to Germany on Wednesday, and then I come back here on Friday and then fly back to the States."

She didn't look at me again—just stamped my passport, murmured some vague welcome to Great Britain, and looked past me to the next approaching traveler. After lifting my bags from the carousel, I took a train into central London that reminded me of the D.C. metro except it had an old lady pushing a refreshments cart down the aisle who sold beer and "crisps" or potato chips. A half hour later, the train arrived at Victoria station, and I caught one of those roomy taxis they have in London where you can ride facing backwards.

I had started working on this book the previous summer, and just two months prior to my arrival in London, my wife Jennifer gave birth to our daughter Georgia. The State of California has a very liberal new law that provides what they call "bonding time" with a new child. From mid-November until early January the state paid fifty-five percent of my income so that I could stay home and bond. As anyone who has ever had a child can attest, the whole time was a exhaustion of doctor visits, midnight changing, round-the-clock feedings, relatives in and out of the house, and those constant consultations with some book Jennifer assured me was the bible of newborn guides.

Meanwhile, I was also reading the dozens of new and used books on much different subjects—ranging from seventeenth century history in England and Germany to the lives and writings of the two main characters in my book. This trip was to be just a component of my research. I wanted to actually go and stand in some of the places where the people I am writing about spent their lives. I wasn't sure exactly what I was looking for, but I knew that I wanted to see some of the buildings and landscapes they saw and to touch some of the books they had in their libraries.

The taxi driver asked me what I was doing in London. "Research for a book," I told him.

"What's the book aboot?" he asked.

"Isaac Newton," I said. "And Godfrey Wilhelm Leibniz."

"Is that a fiction book?" he asked.

"No, nonfiction," I said. "Well narrative nonfiction really." Silence. "I'm a science writer," I said.

"Oh," he said. "Well you picked a good day for it."

It was sunny, a Saturday afternoon, and there were crowds of people marching up and down the sidewalks on both sides of the street. We wound our way through a dozen incomprehensible roundabouts and inched along wide avenues through the Buckingham palace area.

"Look there," the cabbie said. There were throngs of tourists everywhere, but after a moment, I caught a brief glimpse of bright red overcoat, "Changing of the guard," the cabbie said, suddenly very satisfied with himself. He drove the final few blocks to my hotel, which was in London's west end, right on a street called The Strand in the heart of the theatre district.

Everyone goes to London's west—or at least everyone seems to. This is one of the oldest parts of the city and one of the most fashionable and most touristy today. Even on a cold, drizzly January morning, the street is bustling with a mob of people. Across the street from my hotel is the world-famous Savoy. My hotel is the less famous across the street from the Savoy. Slightly more roomy than the taxi that took me there, perhaps, though my friend John, who lives in Oxford came down to visit the next day, he remarked "Oh well—at least you have your own bathroom."

Not wanting to waste any time, I packed up my camera and took off walking east along the Thames riverfront to my first destination. I had picked this part of town because of its proximity to the final resting place of Sir Isaac Newton: Newton spent the last third of his life in London, and he was buried in Westminster Abbey—the imposing, ornately designed cathedral-like monastery in the center of London right by the bend of the Thames River and right down the street from my hotel. It's one of the main tourist attractions in London, and it stands out like a gothic goliath on one side of a large traffic square right next to Big Ben and the Parliament buildings. I had never been to Westminster Abbey, even when I had spent more than a week in London a few years before.

The Abbey is famous, of course, for more than just Newton. It is where the kings and queens of England are crowned when they come to power and where they are buried when they die. In fact, I saw the coronation chair on display when I was there. It's in one off the Abbey's chambers off to the right of the entryway. I was shocked to see that it is covered with graffiti carved into the wood of it. One of the docents told me that it was carved into it by schoolchildren when Newton was a boy. Newton is not the only distinguished commoner buried here. Next to him lies the cream of the last several centuries of British society—architects, scientists, poets, generals, theologians, and politicians.

But I cared not for poets, kings, and ambitious generals. My purpose was singular. I had read in several books that he was buried in the Nave at Westminster Abbey, but as I walked the ten or so blocks from my overpriced hotel, I realized that I wasn't even sure what a nave looked like. That doesn't matter, I said to myself. I'm sure they will be able to direct me. All I had to do was find the Abbey itself and explore. . . .