The new British £2 coins have "standing on the shoulders of giants" stamped on to the milled edge. Why?

• THIS IS a quotation from a letter by Isaac Newton, who was both a top scientist and later Master of the Royal Mint. It appears on two-pound coins (and on a book by Melvyn Bragg) because of a misconception about what it means. According to a press release about the coin issued by the Mint, the words refer to Newton's work on gravity, and indicate the modest way in which he described his success as being based on the work of his predecessors. None of this is true. The words come from a letter written to Robert Hooke many years before the work on gravity was published. They are part of a bitter correspondence between the two. Hooke claimed that Newton had stolen his own colour theory of light. It happens that Hooke was a very short man, with a twisted back. Newton's reply was that "if I have seen further" it is by standing on the shoulders of giants - meaning "I have no need to pinch ideas from a little runt like you," and implying that Hooke was an intellectual pygmy.

  John Gribbin, author of Newton in 90 Minutes, Brighton, West Sussex