Partly. In private notes written around 1704, Isaac Newton calculated that a prophetic period in the Bible would end no earlier than 2060. But he did not predict the physical destruction of the Earth. He expected the fall of corrupt powers and the start of a peaceful, divinely ruled age, and he wrote that he gave the date mainly to stop other people from making rash predictions.
The “Newton predicted the world will end in 2060” headline resurfaces every few years. It is a good story because it combines the most famous scientist in history with a specific date. What he wrote is more interesting than the headline, and it says more about Newton than about the end of the world.
Did Isaac Newton predict the end of the world?
Not in the way the headlines suggest. Newton did calculate a date, 2060, for the end of a period described in biblical prophecy. But for Newton, that end meant the end of an age of corruption in the church and the world, followed by the return of Christ and a thousand-year kingdom of peace. It was a religious expectation about history, not a scientific calculation about the planet.
Newton’s secret religious papers
Newton (1643–1727) is famous for the laws of motion, universal gravitation, calculus and his work on light. Fewer people know that he spent decades studying theology, biblical chronology and alchemy, and wrote more on religion than on science. Historians estimate his theological writings run to well over a million words.
Most of these papers stayed private. One reason was that Newton held views his contemporaries would have considered heretical: he rejected the doctrine of the Trinity, which could have cost him his position at Cambridge, where he was a fellow of Trinity College and Lucasian Professor of Mathematics.
After his death, the papers passed through his family to the Earls of Portsmouth. In 1936 a large collection was sold at Sotheby’s in London. The economist John Maynard Keynes bought many of the alchemical papers, and the Jewish scholar Abraham Shalom Yahuda bought many of the theological ones. Yahuda’s collection was later given to what is now the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem, which digitised about 7,500 pages of Newton’s theological manuscripts and put them online in 2012. In 2016 UNESCO added the collection to its Memory of the World register.
How did Newton arrive at 2060?
Newton studied the prophecies in the Book of Daniel and the Book of Revelation, which describe a period of “a time, times, and half a time”, or 1,260 days. Like many Protestant scholars of his day, he used the “day-for-a-year” principle, reading each prophetic day as a year. So 1,260 days became 1,260 years.
The question was when to start counting. Newton started from the year 800, when Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne emperor in Rome. Newton saw this as the moment the papacy gained worldly power, which he regarded as the beginning of the corrupt period the prophecies describe:
800 AD + 1,260 years = 2060 AD
What Newton actually wrote
The main note is in a manuscript catalogued as Yahuda MS 7.3g, written around 1704. Newton says the period of 1,260 years, counted from 800, “will end A.C. 2060. It may end later, but I see no reason for its ending sooner.”
He then explains why he is even mentioning a date:
“This I mention not to assert when the time of the end shall be, but to put a stop to the rash conjectures of fancifull men who are frequently predicting the time of the end, and by doing so bring the sacred prophesies into discredit as often as their predictions fail.”
Isaac Newton, Yahuda MS 7.3g (c. 1704)
So Newton’s 2060 was partly a deliberately late date. He was annoyed by people who kept announcing that the end was imminent, because every failed prediction made the Bible look foolish. By pushing the date far into the future, he hoped to stop them.
What did Newton think would happen in 2060?
Not the end of the planet. In Newton’s reading of prophecy, the end of the 1,260 years would bring:
- the fall of the corrupt religious and political powers he believed had ruled since 800,
- the return of Christ,
- and the start of a peaceful, divinely ruled age on Earth, often called the millennium.
Newton also believed that Jews would return to their homeland before these events, an idea that later made his papers especially interesting to scholars in Israel.
Why the “2060” story keeps going viral
The modern story took off in 2003, when newspapers reported on the newly studied manuscripts, and again in 2007, when the library in Jerusalem exhibited them for the first time. Since then it has resurfaced regularly, often with headlines like “Isaac Newton predicted the world will end in 2060”.
It spreads because it combines three things people find irresistible: a famous genius, a secret document and a specific date. But it usually leaves out the most important part, which is that Newton was arguing against date-setting, not for it. For other end-of-world dates that came and went, see 12 times the world was supposed to end.
How does Newton’s 2060 compare with science and other traditions?
Newton’s date belongs to the tradition of biblical prophecy, alongside the Book of Revelation’s visions of judgment and renewal. We compare that tradition with Islamic, Hindu and Norse ideas of the end, and with modern science, in Signs of the end across religions and science.
Modern science gives a very different kind of answer: no date at all, but risks and timescales, from human-made dangers this century to the Sun’s brightening over a billion years. See when the world will end according to science.
Frequently asked questions
Is 2060 a scientific prediction?
No. It comes from Newton’s reading of the Bible, not from his physics or mathematics.
Did Newton say the world will end in 2060?
He wrote that a prophetic period would end no sooner than 2060, and possibly later. He did not say the Earth would be destroyed, and he wrote that he mentioned the date to discourage others from predicting the end.
Where can I see Newton’s 2060 manuscript?
It is part of the Yahuda collection at the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem, which has digitised Newton’s theological papers so anyone can view them online.
Was Isaac Newton religious?
Very. He was a devout Christian who spent decades studying the Bible, though he privately rejected the doctrine of the Trinity, a view he kept secret during his lifetime.
What else did Newton write about prophecy?
His book Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John was published in 1733, six years after his death. It does not contain the 2060 date.
Sources and further reading
- Phys.org: Israeli library uploads Newton’s theological texts (2012)
- UNESCO Memory of the World: Newton’s theological manuscripts
- The Newton Project: transcriptions of Newton’s writings
- Encyclopaedia Britannica: Isaac Newton
Related articles
Or start from the beginning: all predictions about the end of the world.
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