Robert Hooke

Template:Short description Template:Pp-vandalism Template:Good article Template:Use dmy dates Template:Use British English Template:Infobox scientist

Robert Hooke Template:Post-nominals (Template:IPAc-en; 18 July 1635Template:Snd3 March 1703)Template:Sfnp Template:Efn was an English polymath who was active as a physicist ("natural philosopher"), astronomer, geologist, meteorologist and architect.Template:Sfnp He is credited as one of the first scientists to investigate living things at microscopic scale in 1665,Template:Sfnp using a compound microscope that he designed.Template:Sfnp Hooke was an impoverished scientific inquirer in young adulthood who went on to become one of the most important scientists of his time.Template:Sfnp After the Great Fire of London in 1666, Hooke (as a surveyor and architect) attained wealth and esteem by performing more than half of the property line surveys and assisting with the city's rapid reconstruction.Template:Sfnp Template:Sfnp Often vilified by writers in the centuries after his death, his reputation was restored at the end of the twentieth century and he has been called "England's Leonardo [da Vinci]".Template:Sfnp

Hooke was a Fellow of the Royal Society and from 1662, he was its first Curator of Experiments.Template:Sfnp From 1665 to 1703, he was also Professor of Geometry at Gresham College.Template:Sfnp Hooke began his scientific career as an assistant to the physical scientist Robert Boyle. Hooke built the vacuum pumps that were used in Boyle's experiments on gas law and also conducted experiments.Template:Sfnp In 1664, Hooke identified the rotations of Mars and Jupiter.Template:Sfnp Hooke's 1665 book Micrographia, in which he coined the term cell, encouraged microscopic investigations.Template:Sfnp Template:Sfnp Investigating optics Template:Snd specifically light refraction Template:Snd Hooke inferred a wave theory of light.Template:Sfnp His is the first-recorded hypothesis of the cause of the expansion of matter by heat,Template:Sfnp of air's composition by small particles in constant motion that thus generate its pressure,Template:Sfnp and of heat as energy.Template:Sfnp

In physics, Hooke inferred that gravity obeys an inverse square law and arguably was the first to hypothesise such a relation in planetary motion,Template:Sfnp Template:Sfnp a principle Isaac Newton furthered and formalised in Newton's law of universal gravitation.Template:Sfnp Priority over this insight contributed to the rivalry between Hooke and Newton. In geology and palaeontology, Hooke originated the theory of a terraqueous globe,Template:Sfnp thus disputing the Biblical view of the Earth's age; he also hypothesised the extinction of species, and argued hills and mountains had become elevated by geological processes.Template:Sfnp By identifying fossils of extinct species, Hooke presaged the theory of biological evolution.Template:Sfnp Template:Sfnp

Life and works

Early life

Much of what is known of Hooke's early life comes from an autobiography he commenced in 1696 but never completed; Richard Waller FRS mentions it in his introduction to The Posthumous Works of Robert Hooke, M.D. S.R.S., which was printed in 1705.Template:Sfnp Template:Efn The work of Waller, along with John Ward's Lives of the Gresham Professors,Template:Sfnp and John Aubrey's Brief LivesTemplate:Sfnp form the major near-contemporaneous biographical accounts of his life.

Hooke was born in 1635 in Freshwater, Isle of Wight, to Cecily Gyles and the Anglican priest John Hooke, who was the curate of All Saints' Church, Freshwater.Template:Sfnp Robert was the youngest, by seven years, of four siblings (two boys and two girls); he was frail and not expected to live.Template:Sfnp Template:Sfnp Although his father gave him some instruction in English, (Latin) Grammar and Divinity, Robert's education was largely neglected.Template:Sfnp Left to his own devices, he made little mechanical toys; seeing a brass clock dismantled, he built a wooden replica that "would go".Template:Sfnp

Hooke's father died in October 1648, leaving £40 in his will to Robert (plus another £10 held over from his grandmother).Template:Sfnp Template:Efn At the age of 13, he took this to London to become an apprentice to the celebrated painter Peter Lely.Template:Sfnp Hooke also had "some instruction in drawing" from the limner Samuel CowperTemplate:Sfnp but "the smell of the Oil Colours did not agree with his Constitution, increasing his Head-ache to which he was ever too much subject", and he became a pupil at Westminster School, living with its master Richard Busby.Template:Sfnp Hooke quickly mastered Latin, Greek and Euclid's Elements;Template:Sfnp he also learnt to play the organ Template:Sfnp and began his lifelong study of mechanics.Template:Sfnp He remained an accomplished draughtsman, as he was later to demonstrate in his drawings that illustrate the work of Robert Boyle and Hooke's own Micrographia.Template:Sfnp

Oxford

File:Robert Boyle 0001.jpg

Robert Boyle by Johann Kerseboom, at Gawthorpe Hall, Lancashire

In 1653, Hooke secured a place at Christ Church, Oxford, receiving free tuition and accommodation as an organist and a chorister, and a basic income as a servitor,Template:Sfnp Template:Efn despite the fact he did not officially matriculate until 1658.Template:Sfnp In 1662, Hooke was awarded a Master of Arts degree.Template:Sfnp

While a student at Oxford, Hooke was also employed as an assistant to Dr Thomas Willis Template:Snd a physician, chemist and member of the Oxford Philosophical Club.Template:Sfnp Template:Efn The Philosophical Club had been founded by John Wilkins, Warden of Wadham College, who led this important group of scientists who went on to form the nucleus of the Royal Society.Template:Sfnp In 1659, Hooke described to the Club some elements of a method of heavier-than-air flight but concluded human muscles were insufficient to the task.Template:Sfnp Through the Club, Hooke met Seth Ward (the University's Savilian Professor of Astronomy) and developed for Ward a mechanism that improved the regularity of pendulum clocks used for astronomical time-keeping.Template:Sfnp Hooke characterised his Oxford days as the foundation of his lifelong passion for science.Template:Sfnp The friends he made there, particularly Christopher Wren, were important to him throughout his career. Willis introduced Hooke to Robert Boyle, who the Club sought to attract to Oxford.Template:Sfnp

In 1655, Boyle moved to Oxford and Hooke became nominally his assistant but in practice his co-experimenter.Template:Sfnp Boyle had been working on gas pressures; the possibility a vacuum might exist despite Aristotle's maxim "Nature abhors a vacuum" had just begun to be considered. Hooke developed an air pump for Boyle's experiments rather than use Ralph Greatorex's pump, which Hooke considered as "too gross to perform any great matter".Template:Sfnp Hooke's engine enabled the development of the eponymous law that was subsequently attributed to Boyle;Template:Sfnp Template:Efn Hooke had a particularly keen eye and was an adept mathematician, neither of which applied to Boyle. Hooke taught Boyle Euclid's Elements and Descartes's Principles of Philosophy;Template:Sfnp it also caused them to recognise fire as a chemical reaction and not, as Aristotle taught, a fundamental element of nature.Template:Sfnp

Royal Society

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According to Henry Robinson, Librarian of The Royal Society in 1935: Template:Blockquote

The Royal Society for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge by Experiment Template:Efn was founded in 1660 and given its Royal Charter in July 1662.Template:Sfnp On 5 November 1661, Robert Moray proposed the appointment of a curator to furnish the society with experiments, and this was unanimously passed and Hooke was named on Boyle's recommendation.Template:Sfnp The Society did not have a reliable income to fully fund the post of Curator of Experiments but in 1664, John Cutler settled an annual gratuity of £50 on the Society to found a "Template:Notatypo" lectureship at Gresham CollegeTemplate:Sfnp on the understanding the Society would appoint Hooke to this task.Template:Sfnp On 27 June 1664, Hooke was confirmed to the office and on 11 January 1665, he was named Curator by Office for life with an annual salary of £80,Template:Efn which consisting of £30 from the Society and Cutler's £50 annuity.Template:Sfnp Template:Efn

In June 1663, Hooke was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS).Template:Sfnp On 20 March 1665, he was also appointed Gresham Professor of Geometry.Template:Sfnp Template:Sfnp On 13 September 1667, Hooke became acting Secretary of the SocietyTemplate:Sfnp and on 19 December 1677, he was appointed its Joint Secretary.Template:Sfnp

Personality, relationships, health and death

File:Acta Eruditorum - III fisica, 1707 – BEIC 13369403.jpg

Illustration from The posthumous works of Robert Hooke... published in Acta Eruditorum, 1707

Although John Aubrey described Hooke as a person of "great virtue and goodness".Template:Sfnp much has been written about the unpleasant side of Hooke's personality. According to his first biographer Richard Waller, Hooke was "in person, but despicable", and "melancholy, mistrustful, and jealous".Template:Sfnp Waller's comments influenced other writers for more than 200 years such that many books and articlesTemplate:Sndespecially biographies of Isaac Newton Template:Sndportray Hooke as a disgruntled, selfish, anti-social curmudgeon. For example, Arthur Berry said Hooke "claimed credit for most of the scientific discoveries of the time".Template:Sfnp Sullivan wrote he was "positively unscrupulous" and had an "uneasy apprehensive vanity" in dealings with Newton.Template:Sfnp Manuel described Hooke as "cantankerous, envious, vengeful".Template:Sfnp According to More, Hooke had both a "cynical temperament" and a "caustic tongue".Template:Sfnp Andrade was more sympathetic but still described Hooke as "difficult", "suspicious" and "irritable".Template:Sfnp In October 1675, the Council of the Royal Society considered a motion to expel Hooke because of an attack he made on Christiaan Huygens over scientific priority in watch design but it did not pass.Template:Sfnp According to Hooke's biographer Ellen Drake: Template:Blockquote

The publication of Hooke's diary in 1935Template:Sfnp revealed previously unknown details about his social and familial relationships. His biographer Margaret Template:Notatypo said: "the picture which is usually painted of Hooke as a Template:No break recluse is completely false".Template:Sfnp He interacted with noted artisans such as clock-maker Thomas Tompion Template:Sfnp and instrument-maker Christopher Cocks (Cox).Template:Sfnp Hooke often met Christopher Wren, with whom he shared many interests, and had a lasting friendship with John Aubrey. His diaries also make frequent reference to meetings at coffeehouses and taverns, as well as to dinners with Robert Boyle. On many occasions, Hooke took tea with his lab assistant Harry Hunt. Although he largely lived aloneTemplate:Sndapart from the servants who ran his homeTemplate:Snd his niece Grace Hooke and his cousin Tom Giles lived with him for some years as children.Template:Sfnp

Hooke never married. According to his diary, Hooke had a sexual relationship with his niece Grace, after she had turned 16. Grace was in his custody since the age of 10.Template:Sfnp Template:Sfnp He also had sexual relations with several maids and housekeepers. Hooke's biographer Stephen Inwood considers Grace to have been the love of his life, and he was devastated when she died in 1687. Inwood also mentions "The age difference between him and Grace was commonplace and would not have upset his contemporaries as it does us". The incestous relationship would nevertheless have been frowned upon and tried by an ecclesiastical court had it been discovered, it was not however a capital felony after 1660.Template:Sfnp Template:Efn

Since childhood, Hooke suffered from migraine, tinnitus, dizziness and bouts of insomnia;Template:Sfnp he also had a spinal deformity that was consistent with a diagnosis of Scheuermann's kyphosis, giving him in middle and later years a "thin and crooked body, over-large head and protruding eyes".Template:Sfnp Approaching these in a scientific spirit, he experimented with self-medication, diligently recording symptoms, substances and effects in his diary. He regularly used sal ammoniac, emetics, laxatives and opiates, which appear to have had an increasing effect on his physical and mental health over time.Template:Sfnp

Hooke died in London on 3 March 1703, having been blind and bedridden during the last year of his life. A chest containing £8,000 in money and gold was found in his room at Gresham College.Template:Sfn Template:Efn His library contained over 3,000 books in Latin, French, Italian and English.Template:Sfn Although he had talked of leaving a generous bequest to the Royal Society, which would have given his name to a library, laboratory and lectures, no will was found and the money passed to a cousin named Elizabeth Stephens.Template:Sfnp Hooke was buried at St Helen's Church, Bishopsgate, in the City of London Template:Sfnp but the precise location of his grave is unknown.

Science

Hooke's role at the Royal Society was to demonstrate experiments from his own methods or at the suggestion of members. Among his earliest demonstrations were discussions of the nature of air and the implosion of glass bubbles that had been sealed with enclosed hot air.Template:Sfnp He also demonstrated that a dog could be kept alive with its thorax opened, provided air was pumped in and out of its lungs.Template:Sfnp Template:Efn He noted the difference between venous and arterial blood, and thus demonstrated that the Template:Lang ("food of life")Template:Efn and Template:Lang [flames] were the same thing.Template:Sfnp Template:Sfnp There were also experiments on gravity, the falling of objects, the weighing of bodies, the measurement of barometric pressure at different heights, and the movement of pendulums up to Template:Convert.Template:Sfnp His biographer Template:Notatypo described him as England's first meteorologist, in her description of his essay Method for making a history of the weather.Template:Sfnp (Hooke specifies that a thermometer, a hygrometer, a wind gauge and a record sheet be used for proper weather records.Template:Sfnp Template:Efn)

Astronomy

Hooke's drawing of the planet Saturn

Hooke noted the shadows (a and b) cast by both the globe and the rings on each other in this drawing of Saturn.

File:Moon Micrographia Hooke.png

Drawings of the Moon and the Pleiades from Hooke's Micrographia

In May 1664, using a Template:Cvt refracting telescope, Hooke observed the Great Red Spot of Jupiter for two hours as it moved across the planet's face. In March 1665, he published his findings and from them, the Italian astronomer Giovanni Cassini calculated the rotation period of Jupiter to be nine hours and fifty-five minutes.Template:Sfnp

One of the most-challenging problems Hooke investigated was the measurement of the distance from Earth to a star other than the Sun. Hooke selected the star Gamma Draconis and chose the method of parallax determination. In 1669, after several months of observing, Hooke believed the desired result had been achieved. It is now known his equipment was far too imprecise to obtain an accurate measurement.Template:Sfnp

Hooke's Micrographia contains illustrations of the Pleiades star cluster and lunar craters. He conducted experiments to investigate the formation of these craters and concluded their existence meant the Moon must have its own gravity, a radical departure from the contemporaneous Aristotelian celestial model.Template:Sfnp He also was an early observer of the rings of Saturn,Template:Sfnp and discovered one of the first-observed double-star systems Gamma Arietis in 1664.Template:Sfnp

To achieve these discoveries, Hooke needed better instruments than those that were available at the time. Accordingly, he invented three new mechanisms: the Hooke joint, a sophisticated universal joint that allowed his instruments to smoothly follow the apparent motion of the observed body; the first clockwork drive to automate the process; and a micrometer screw that allowed him to achieve a precision of ten seconds of arc.Template:Sfnp Template:Sfnp Hooke was dissatisfied with refracting telescopes so he built the first practical Gregorian telescope that used a silvered glass mirror.Template:Sfnp Template:Sfnp Template:Efn

Mechanics

Template:Further In 1660, Hooke discovered the law of elasticity that bears his name and describes the linear variation of tension with extension in an elastic spring. Hooke first described this discovery in an anagram "ceiiinosssttuv", whose solution he published in 1678 as Template:Lang ("As the extension, so the force").Template:Sfnp His work on elasticity culminated in his development of the balance spring or hairspring, which for the first time enabled a portable timepieceTemplate:Snda watchTemplate:Sndto keep time with reasonable accuracy. A bitter dispute between Hooke and Christiaan Huygens on the priority of this invention was to continue for centuries after the death of both but a note dated 23 June 1670 in the journals of the Royal Society,Template:Sfnp describing a demonstration of a balance-controlled watch before the Royal Society, may support Hooke's claim to priority for the idea. Nevertheless, it is Huygens who is credited with building the first watch to use a balance spring.Template:Sfnp Template:Sfnp

Hooke's announcement of his law of elasticity using an anagram was a method scientists, such as Hooke, Huygens and Galileo, sometimes used to establish priority for a discovery without revealing details.Template:Sfnp Hooke used mechanical analogues to understand fundamental processes such as the motion of a spherical pendulum and of a ball in a hollow cone, to demonstrate central force due to gravity,Template:Sfnp and a hanging chain net with point loads to provide the optimum shape for a dome with heavy cross on top.Template:Sfnp

Despite continuing reports to the contrary,Template:Sfnp Hooke did not influence Thomas Newcomen's invention of the steam engine; this myth, which originated in an article in the third edition of Encyclopædia Britannica, has been found to be mistaken.Template:Sfnp

Gravitation

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While many of Hooke's contemporaries, such as Isaac Newton, believed in aether as a medium for transmitting attraction and repulsion between separated celestial bodies,Template:Sfnp Template:Sfnp Hooke argued for an attracting principle of gravitation in Micrographia (1665). In a communication to the Royal Society in 1666,Template:Sfnp he wrote: Template:Blockquote

Hooke's 1674 Gresham lecture, An Attempt to Prove the Motion of the Earth by Observations (published 1679), said gravitation applies to "all celestial bodies"Template:Sfnp and restated these three propositions.Template:Sfnp

Hooke's statements up to 1674 make no mention, however, that an inverse square law applies or might apply to these attractions. His model of gravitation was also not yet universal, though it approached universality more closely than previous hypotheses.Template:Sfn Hooke did not provide accompanying evidence or mathematical demonstration; he stated in 1674: "Now what these several degrees [of gravitational attraction] are I have not yet experimentally verified", indicating he did not yet know what law the gravitation might follow; and about his whole proposal, he said: "This I only hint at present ... having my self many other things in hand which I would first Template:Notatypo, and therefore cannot so well attend it" (i.e. "prosecuting this Inquiry").Template:Sfnp

In November 1679, Hooke initiated a notable exchange of letters with Newton that was published in 1960.Template:Sfnp Hooke's ostensible purpose was to tell Newton he (Hooke) had been appointed to manage the Royal Society's correspondence;Template:Sfnp Hooke therefore wanted to hear from members about their research or their views about the research of others. Hooke asked Newton's opinions about various matters. Among other items, Hooke mentioned "compounding the celestial motions of the planets of a direct motion by the tangent and an attractive motion towards the central body"; his "hypothesis of the Template:Notatypo or causes of springinesse"; a new hypothesis from Paris about planetary motions, which he described at length; efforts to carry out or improve national surveys; and the difference of latitude between London and Cambridge.Template:Sfnp

Newton's reply offered "a Template:Notatypo of my own" about a terrestrial experiment rather than a proposal about celestial motions that might detect the Earth's motion; the experiment would use a body suspended in air and then dropped. Hooke wanted to discern how Newton thought the falling body could experimentally reveal the Earth's motion by its direction of deviation from the vertical but Hooke went on hypothetically to consider how its motion could continue if the solid Earth had not been in the way, on a spiral path to the centre. Hooke disagreed with Newton's idea of the body's continuing motion. A further short correspondence developed; towards the end of it, writing on 6 January 1680 to Newton, Hooke communicated his "supposition ... that the Attraction always is in a duplicate proportion to the Distance from the Template:Notatypo, and Consequently that the Velocity will be in a subduplicate proportion to the Attraction and Consequently as Kepler Supposes Template:Notatypo to the Distance".Template:Sfnp (Hooke's inference about the velocity is incorrect.Template:Sfn)

In 1686, when the first book of Newton's Principia was presented to the Royal Society, Hooke said he had given Newton the "notion" of "the rule of the decrease of Gravity, being reciprocally as the squares of the distances from the Template:Notatypo". At the same time, according to Edmond Halley's contemporaneous report, Hooke agreed "the Demonstration of the Curves generated thereby" was wholly Newton's.Template:Sfnp

According to a 2002 assessment of the early history of the inverse square law: "by the late 1660s, the assumption of an 'inverse proportion between gravity and the square of distance' was rather common and had been advanced by a number of different people for different reasons".Template:Sfnp In the 1660s, Newton had shown for planetary motion under a circular assumption, force in the radial direction had an inverse-square relation with distance from the centre.Template:Sfnp Newton, who in May 1686 was presented with Hooke's claim to priority on the inverse square law, denied he was to be credited as author of the idea, giving reasons including the citation of prior work by others.Template:Sfnp Newton also said that, even if he had first heard of the inverse square proportion from Hooke (which Newton said he had not), he would still have some rights to it because of his mathematical developments and demonstrations. These, he said, enabled observations to be relied upon as evidence of its accuracy while according to Newton, Hooke, without mathematical demonstrations and evidence in favour of the supposition, could only guess it was approximately valid "at great distances from the centre".Template:Sfnp

Newton did accept and acknowledge, in all editions of the Principia, Hooke and others had separately appreciated the inverse square law in the solar system. Newton acknowledged Wren, Hooke and Halley in this connection in his "Scholium to Proposition 4" in BookTemplate:Nbsp1.Template:Sfnp In a letter to Halley, Newton also acknowledged his correspondence with Hooke in 1679–1680 had reawakened his dormant interest in astronomical matters but that did not mean, according to Newton, Hooke had told Newton anything new or original. Newton wrote: Template:Blockquote

Whilst Newton was primarily a pioneer in mathematical analysis and its applications, and optical experimentation, Hooke was a creative experimenter of such great range who left some of his ideas, such as those about gravitation, undeveloped. In 1759, decades after the deaths of both Newton and Hooke, Alexis Clairaut, mathematical astronomer eminent in his own right in the field of gravitational studies, reviewed Hooke's published work on gravitation. According to Stephen Peter Rigaud, Clairaut wrote: "The example of Hooke and that of Kepler [serves] to show what a distance there is between a truth that is glimpsed and a truth that is demonstrated".Template:Efn Template:Sfnp I. Bernard Cohen said: "Hooke's claim to the inverse-square law has masked Newton's far more fundamental debt to him, the analysis of curvilinear orbital motion. In asking for too much credit, Hooke effectively denied to himself the credit due him for a seminal idea".Template:Sfnp

Horology

File:Fotothek df tg 0003783 Uhr ^ Uhrwerk.jpg

Drawing by Christiaan Huygens of one of his first balance springs, which is attached to a balance wheel

Hooke made important contributions to the science of timekeeping and was intimately involved in the advances of his time; these included refinement of the pendulum as a better regulator for clocks, increased precision of clock mechanisms and the use of the balance spring to improve the timekeeping of watches.

Galileo had observed the regularity of a pendulum and Huygens first incorporated it in a clock;Template:Sfnp in 1668, Hooke demonstrated his new device to keep a pendulum swinging regularly in unsteady conditions.Template:Sfnp His invention of a tooth-cutting machine enabled a substantial improvement in the accuracy and precision of timepieces.Template:Sfnp Waller reported the invention was, by Hooke's death, in constant use among clock makers.Template:Sfnp

Hooke announced he conceived a way to build a marine chronometer to determine longitude.Template:Sfnp Template:Efn and with the help of Boyle and others, he attempted to patent it. In the process, Hooke demonstrated a pocket-watch of his own devising that was fitted with a coil spring attached to the arbour of the balance. Hooke's refusal to accept an escape clause in the proposed exclusive contract for the use of this idea resulted in its abandonment.Template:Sfnp Template:Efn

Hooke developed the principle of the balance spring independently of Huygens and at least five years beforehand.Template:Sfnp Huygens published his own work in Journal de Scavans in February 1675 and built the first functioning watch to use a balance spring.Template:Sfnp

Microscopy

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In 1663 and 1664, Hooke made his microscopic, and some astronomic, observations, which he collated in Micrographia in 1665. His book, which describes observations with microscopes and telescopes, as well as original work in biology, contains the earliest-recorded observation of a microorganism, the microfungus Mucor.Template:Sfnp Template:Sfnp Hooke coined the term "cell", suggesting a resemblance between plant structures and honeycomb cells.Template:SfnpThe hand-crafted, leather-and-gold-tooled microscope he designed and used to make the observations for Micrographia, which Christopher Cock made for him in London, is on display at the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Maryland.Template:Sfnp Hooke's work developed from that of Henry Power, who published his microscopy work in Experimental Philosophy (1663);Template:Sfnp in turn, the Dutch scientist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek went on to develop increased magnification and so reveal protozoa, blood cells and spermatozoa.Template:Sfnp Template:Sfnp

Micrographia also contains Hooke's, or perhaps Boyle's and Hooke's, ideas on combustion. Hooke's experiments led him to conclude combustion involves a component of air, a statement with which modern scientists would agree but that was not understood widely, if at all, in the seventeenth century. He also concluded respiration and combustion involve a specific and limited component of air.Template:Sfnp According to Partington, if "Hooke had continued his experiments on combustion, it is probable that he would have discovered oxygen".Template:Sfnp

Samuel Pepys wrote of the book in his diary on 21 January 16Template:Sfrac Template:Efn: "Before I went to bed I sat up till two o’clock in my chamber reading of Mr. Hooke's Template:Notatypo Observations, the most ingenious book that ever I read in my life".Template:Sfn

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Palaeontology and geology

One of the observations in Micrographia is of fossil wood, the microscopic structure of which Hooke compared to that of ordinary wood. This led him to conclude that fossilised objects like petrified wood and fossil shells such as ammonites were the remains of living things that had been soaked in mineral-laden petrifying water.Template:Sfnp He believed that such fossils provided reliable clues about the history of life on Earth and, despite the objections of contemporary naturalists like John Ray Template:Sndwho found the concept of extinction theologically unacceptableTemplate:Sndthat in some cases they might represent species that had become extinct through some geological disaster.Template:Sfnp In a series of lectures in 1668, Hooke proposed the then-heretical idea the Earth's surface had been formed by volcanoes and earthquakes, and that the latter were responsible for shell fossils being found far above sea level.Template:Sfnp

In 1835, Charles Lyell, the Scottish geologist and associate of Charles Darwin, wrote of Hooke in Principles of Geology: "His treatise ... is the most philosophical production of that age, in regard to the causes of former changes in the organic and inorganic kingdoms of nature".Template:Sfnp

Memory

Hooke's scientific model of human memory was one of the first of its kind. In a 1682 lecture to the Royal Society, Hooke proposed a mechanical analogue model of human memory that bore little resemblance to the mainly philosophical models of earlier writers.Template:Sfnp This model addressed the components of encoding, memory capacity, repetition, retrieval, and forgetting – some with surprisingly modern accuracy.Template:Sfnp According to psychology professor Douglas Hintzman, Hooke's model's most-interesting points are that it allows for attention and other top-down influences on encoding; it uses resonance to implement parallel, cue-dependent retrieval; it explains memory for recency; it offers a single-system account of repetition and priming; and the power law of forgetting can be derived from the model's assumption in a straightforward way.Template:Sfnp

Other

On 8 July 1680, Hooke observed the nodal patterns associated with the modes of vibration of glass plates. He ran a bow along the edge of a flour-covered glass plate and saw the nodal patterns emerge.Template:Sfnp Template:Sfnp In acoustics, in 1681, Hooke showed the Royal Society that musical tones can be generated using spinning brass cogs cut with teeth in particular proportions.Template:Sfnp

Architecture

File:MK WillenChurch01.JPG

Church of St Mary Magdalene at Willen, Milton Keynes, designed by Hooke

File:Bull and Mouth Street from Ogilby & Morgan's map.jpg

Detail from Ogilby and Morgan's "most accurate Survey of the City of London and Template:Notatypo"Template:Sfnp

Robert Hooke was Surveyor to the City of London and chief assistant to Christopher Wren, in which capacities he helped Wren rebuild London after the Great Fire of 1666.Template:Sfnp Hooke designed the Monument to the Great Fire of London (1672),Template:Sfnp Template:Sfnp Template:Efn Montagu House in Bloomsbury (1674)Template:Sfnp and Bethlem Royal Hospital (1674), which became known as "Bedlam".Template:Sfnp Other buildings Hooke designed include the Royal College of Physicians (1679);Template:Sfnp Aske's Hospital (1679),Template:Sfnp Ragley Hall, Warwickshire (1680);Template:Sfnp the Church of St Mary Magdalene at Willen, Buckinghamshire (1680)Template:Sfnp and Ramsbury Manor, Wiltshire (1681).Template:Sfnp He worked on many of the London churches that were rebuilt after the fire; Hooke was generally subcontracted by Wren; from 1671 to 1696, Wren's office paid Hooke £2,820 in fees,Template:Efn more than he ever earned from his Royal Society and Cutler Lectureship posts.Template:Sfnp

Wren and Hooke were both keen astronomers. The Monument to the Great Fire of London was designed to serve a scientific function as a zenith telescope for astronomical observation, though traffic vibration made it unusable for this purpose.Template:Sfnp Template:Sfnp The legacy of this can be observed in the construction of the spiral staircase, which has no central column, and in the observation chamber, which remains in place below ground level. He also collaborated with Wren on the design of St Paul's Cathedral; Hooke determined the ideal shape of an arch is an inverted catenary and thence that a circular series of such arches makes an ideal shape for the cathedral's dome.Template:Sfnp

In the reconstruction after the Great Fire, Hooke proposed redesigning London's streets on a grid pattern with wide boulevards and arteries,Template:Sfnp for which Wren and others also submitted proposals. The King decided both the prospective cost of building and compensation, and the need to quickly restore trade and population meant the city would be rebuilt on the original property lines.Template:Sfnp Hooke was given the task of surveying the ruins to identify foundations, street edges and property boundaries. He was closely involved with the drafting of an Act of Common Council (April 1667), which set out the process by which the original foundations would be formally recognised and certificated.Template:Sfnp According to Lisa Jardine: "in the four weeks from the 4th of October, [Hooke] helped map the fire-damaged area, began compiling a Land Information System for London, and drew up building regulations for an Act of Parliament to govern the rebuilding".Template:Sfnp Stephen Inwood said: "the surveyors' reports, which were generally written by Hooke, show an admirable ability to get to the nub of intricate neighbourly squabbles, and to produce a crisp and judicious recommendation from a tangle of claims and counter-claims".Template:Sfnp

Hooke also had to measure and certify land that would be compulsorily purchased for the planned road widening so compensation could be paid.Template:Sfnp In 1670, he was appointed Surveyor of the Royal Works.Template:Sfnp Hooke's precise and detailed surveys enabled the production in 1677 of Ogilby and Morgan's large-scale map of London,Template:Sfnp the first-known to be of a specific scale (1:1200).Template:Sfnp

Likenesses

File:Jan Baptist van Helmont portrait.jpg

Portrait conjectured to be Hooke,Template:Sfnp but almost certainly Jan Baptist van Helmont Template:Sfnp

No authenticated portrait of Robert Hooke exists, a situation that has sometimes been attributed to the heated conflicts between Hooke and Isaac Newton, although Hooke's biographer Allan Chapman rejects as a myth claims Newton or his acolytes deliberately destroyed Hooke's portrait.Template:Sfnp German antiquarian and scholar Zacharias Conrad von Uffenbach visited the Royal Society in 1710 and his account of his visit mentions him being shown portraits of "Boyle and Hoock", which were said to be good likenesses but, while Boyle's portrait survives, Hooke's has been lost.Template:Sfnp Template:Sfnp In Hooke's time, the Royal Society met at Gresham College but within a few months of Hooke's death Newton became the Society's president and plans for a new meeting place were made. When the Royal Society moved to new premises in 1710, Hooke's was the only portrait that went missingTemplate:Sfnp and remains so. According to Hooke's diary, he sat for a portrait by renowned artist Mary Beale, so it is possible such a portrait did at some time exist.Template:Sfnp Conversely, Chapman draws attention to the fact that Waller's extensively illustrated work, Posthumous works of Robert Hooke, published shortly after Hooke's death, has no portrait of him.Template:Sfnp

Two contemporaneous, written descriptions of Hooke's appearance have survived; his close friend John Aubrey described him in middle age and at the height of his creative powers:

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Richard Waller, writing in 1705 in The Posthumous Works of Robert Hooke, described the elderly Hooke:

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On 3 July 1939, Time magazine published a portrait, supposedly of Hooke, but when Ashley Montagu traced the source, it was found to lack a verifiable connection to Hooke. Montagu found the two contemporaneous written descriptions of Hooke's appearance agree with one another but that neither matches the portrait in Time.Template:Sfnp

In 2003, historian Lisa Jardine conjectured that a recently discovered portrait was of Hooke,Template:Sfnp but this proposal was disproved by William B. Jensen of the University of Cincinnati who identified the subject as the Flemish scholar Jan Baptist van Helmont.Template:Sfnp

Other possible likenesses of Hooke include:

A seal used by Hooke displays an unusual profile portrait of a man's head, which some have said portrays Hooke.Template:Sfnp
The engraved frontispiece to the 1728 edition of Chambers' Cyclopedia shows a drawing of a bust of Robert Hooke.Template:Sfnp The extent to which the drawing is based on a real work of art is unknown.
A memorial window existed at St Helen's Church, Bishopsgate, London, but it was a formulaic rendering rather than an accurate likeness.Template:Sfnp The window was destroyed in the 1993 Bishopsgate bombing.

File:13 Portrait of Robert Hooke.JPG

Rita Greer's imagined portrait of Hooke

In 2003, the amateur painter Rita Greer embarked on a project to memorialise Hooke and produce credible images of him, both painted and drawn, which she believes match Aubrey's and Waller's descriptions of him. Greer's images of Hooke, which are free to use under the Free Art License, have been used for television programmes in the UK and the US, in books, magazines and for public relations.Template:Sfnp

In 2019, Larry Griffing, an associate professor in Biology at Texas A&M University, proposed that a portrait by Mary Beale of an unknown sitter and referred to as Portrait of a MathematicianTemplate:Sndis actually of Hooke, noting the physical features of the sitter in the portrait match Hooke's. The figure points to a drawing of elliptical motion that appears to match an unpublished manuscript created by him. The painting also includes an orrery depicting the same principle. According to Griffing, buildings included in the image are of Lowther Castle, now in Cumbria, and its Church of St Michael. The church was renovated under one of Hooke's architectural commissions, which Beale would have known from her extensive body of work for the Lowther family.Template:Sfnp According to Griffing, the painting would once have been owned by the Royal Society but was abandoned when Newton, its president, moved the Society's headquarters in 1710.Template:Sfnp Christopher Whittaker of the School of Education, University of Durham, England, has questioned Griffing's analysis; according to Whittaker, it is more likely to be of Isaac Barrow.Template:Sfnp In a response to Whittaker,Template:Sfnp Griffing reaffirmed his deduction.

Commemorations

File:Inscription-to-Hooke-in-Westminster-Abbey.jpg

Hooke memorial plaque in Westminster Abbey

3514 Hooke, an asteroid (1971 UJ)Template:Sfnp
A crater on the Moon and another on Mars are named in his honour.
The Hooke Medal is an annual award by the British Society for Cell Biology, to recognise "an emerging leader in cell biology".Template:Sfnp
List of new memorials to Robert Hooke 2005–2009 erected the occasion of the tercentenary of his death
The Boyle-Hooke plaque in Oxford

Works

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Explanatory notes

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References

Citations

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Sources

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Template:Cite book (Published in the UK (2003) as The man who knew too much: the inventive life of Robert Hooke, 1635-1703, London, Pan Books, ISBN 978-0-330-48829-7, OCLC 59355860)
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External links

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Micrographia
- Hooke's Micrographia, at Project Gutenberg (downloadable collections, including searchable ASCII text and book as complete html document with images)
- Hooke's Micrographia, at Linda Hall Library
- Digitzed images of Micrographia housed at the University of Kentucky Libraries Special Collections Research Center
Lost manuscript of Robert Hooke discovered – from The Guardian
Manuscript bought for The Royal Society – from The Guardian
Robert Hooke's Books, a searchable database of books that belonged to or were annotated by Robert Hooke
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Template:Cite web – A 60-minute presentation by Prof. Michael Cooper, Gresham College, with links to slides, audio, video, and a transcript, with references
Template:Cite journal (A pair of letters exchanged between Hooke and Newton (9 December 1679 and 13 December 1679, omitted from Waller's The Posthumous Works of Robert Hooke, M.D. S.R.S.)
Template:Cite journal (Hooke's diary for MarchTemplate:NdashJuly 1672 and January 1681 to May 1683, omitted by Robinson and Adams from The Diary of Robert Hooke, M.A., M.D., F.R.S., 1672–1680)
Template:Cite journal (A pair of letters exchanged between Hooke and Newton (9 December 1679 and 13 December 1679, omitted from Rowse's Essay on Newton's Principia.)
The Robert Hooke Trail on the Isle of Wight. (Robert Hooke Society, Freshwater)

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