Researching Robert Newton

Newton is best remembered for his portrayal of the feverish-eyed Long John Silver in the 1950 film adaptation of Treasure Island, the film that became the standard for screen portrayals of historical pirates. He continued to portray pirates in Blackbeard in 1952 and Long John Silver again in the 1954 film of the same title, which spawned a miniseries in the mid-1950s. Born in Dorset in the West Country of England and growing up in Cornwall near Lands End, his exaggeration of his West Country accent is credited with popularising the stereotypical "pirate voice". Newton has become the "patron saint" of the annual International Talk Like a Pirate Day.

After not racing at all in 2005, Newton transitioned to the 400 metre hurdles along with the 110 metre hurdles in 2006, achieving a 51.88 personal best in that event. He has no recorded races since 2006. In 2012, he worked as a sports massage therapist.

Newton was Supervisor of the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University. He was known for his book The Crime of Claudius Ptolemy (1977). In Newton's view, Ptolemy was "the most successful fraud in the history of science". Newton showed that Ptolemy had predominantly obtained the astronomical results described in his work The Almagest by computation, and not by the direct observations that Ptolemy described.

Distrust of Ptolemy's observations goes back at least as far as doubts raised in the 16th century by Tycho Brahe and in the 18th century by Delambre. Arthur Berry made similar remarks in about 1899. R. R. Newton also made a charge of conscious falsification.

Newton was also known for his work on change of the rotation rate of the earth, and historical observations of eclipses.