He presented a small version of his telescope to the Royal Society, which honored him by electing him a fellow when he was only thirty. In 1672, when Newton published his new theory of light and color—including the experiments showing that white light can be separated into its component colors by a prism—the society was bombarded with letters disputing his conclusions. Some of the correspondents were scientists of note, among them Robert Hooke and Christiaan Huygens. The controversy affected Newton greatly and, thereafter, he tended to withdraw from the public eye. Though he had vowed after the controversy not to publish any further discoveries, he did, in fact, continue to publish.
Newton conceived a proprietary interest in every subject he investigated; there was hardly any achievement of his creative scientific life that was unaccompanied by acrimony and quarreling. This was largely owing to a great deal of paranoia and self-doubt in Newton's personality. His ego needed to be continually bolstered by the praise and admiration of others, a trait that may have had its cause in Newton's humble origins—his father was a yeoman, a fact that always made Newton uneasy and that he tried to obscure by inventing grandiose genealogies for himself.
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