Robert Hooke
Robert Hooke was an English polymath who was active as a physicist, astronomer, geologist, meteorologist, and architect. He is credited as one of the first scientists to investigate living things at microscopic scale in 1665, using a compound microscope that he designed. Hooke was an impoverished scientific inquirer in young adulthood who went on to become one of the most important scientists of his time. After the Great Fire of London in 1666, Hooke attained wealth and esteem by performing more than half of the property line surveys and assisting with the city's rapid reconstruction. 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|Leonardo ".
Hooke was a Fellow of the Royal Society and from 1662, he was its first Curator of Experiments. From 1665 to 1703, he was also Professor of Geometry at Gresham College. 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. In 1664, Hooke identified the rotations of Mars and Jupiter. Hooke's 1665 book Micrographia, in which he coined the term cell, encouraged microscopic investigations. Investigating optics specifically light refraction Hooke inferred a wave theory of light. His is the first-recorded hypothesis of the cause of the expansion of matter by heat, of air's composition by small particles in constant motion that thus generate its pressure, and of heat as energy.
In physics, Hooke inferred that gravity obeys an inverse square law and arguably was the first to hypothesise such a relation in planetary motion, a principle Isaac Newton furthered and formalised in Newton's law of universal gravitation. Priority over this insight contributed to the rivalry between Hooke and Newton. In geology and palaeontology, Hooke originated the theory of a terraqueous globe, 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. By identifying fossils of extinct species, Hooke presaged the theory of biological evolution.
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. The work of Waller, along with John Ward's Lives of the Gresham Professors, and John Aubrey's Brief Lives 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. Robert was the youngest, by seven years, of four siblings ; he was frail and not expected to live. Although his father gave him some instruction in English, Grammar, and Divinity, Robert's education was largely neglected. Left to his own devices, he made little mechanical toys; seeing a brass clock dismantled, he built a wooden replica that "would go".
Hooke's father died in October 1648, leaving £40 in his will to Robert. At the age of 13, he took this to London to become an apprentice to the celebrated painter Peter Lely. Hooke also had "some instruction in drawing" from the limner Samuel Cowper 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. Hooke quickly mastered Latin, Greek, and Euclid's Elements; he also learnt to play the organ and began his lifelong study of mechanics. 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.
Oxford
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, In 1662, Hooke was awarded a Master of Arts degree.While a student at Oxford, Hooke was also employed as an assistant to Dr Thomas Willis a physician, chemist, and member of the Oxford Philosophical Club. 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. 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. Through the Club, Hooke met Seth Ward and developed for Ward a mechanism that improved the regularity of pendulum clocks used for astronomical time-keeping. Hooke characterised his Oxford days as the foundation of his lifelong passion for science. 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.
In 1655, Boyle moved to Oxford and Hooke became nominally his assistant but in practice his co-experimenter. 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". Hooke's engine enabled the development of the eponymous law that was subsequently attributed to Boyle; 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; it also caused them to recognise fire as a chemical reaction and not, as Aristotle taught, a fundamental element of nature.
Royal Society
According to Henry Robinson, Librarian of The Royal Society in 1935:The Royal Society for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge by Experiment was founded in 1660 and given its Royal Charter in July 1662. 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. 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 "" lectureship at Gresham College on the understanding the Society would appoint Hooke to this task. 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, consisting of £30 from the Society and Cutler's £50 annuity.
In June 1663, Hooke was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. On 20 March 1665, he was also appointed Gresham Professor of Geometry. On 13 September 1667, Hooke became acting Secretary of the Society and on 19 December 1677, he was appointed its Joint Secretary.
Personality, relationships, health, and death
Although John Aubrey described Hooke as a person of "great virtue and goodness". 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". Waller's comments influenced other writers for more than 200 years such that many books and articlesespecially biographies of Isaac Newtonportray 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". Sullivan wrote he was "positively unscrupulous" and had an "uneasy apprehensive vanity" in dealings with Newton. Manuel described Hooke as "cantankerous, envious, vengeful". According to More, Hooke had both a "cynical temperament" and a "caustic tongue". Andrade was more sympathetic but still described Hooke as "difficult", "suspicious" and "irritable". 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. According to Hooke's biographer Ellen Drake:The publication of Hooke's diary in 1935 revealed previously unknown details about his social and familial relationships. His biographer Margaret said: "the picture which is usually painted of Hooke as a recluse is completely false". He interacted with noted artisans such as clock-maker Thomas Tompion and instrument-maker Christopher Cocks. 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 aloneapart from the servants who ran his home his niece Grace Hooke and his cousin Tom Giles lived with him for some years as children.
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. 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.
Since childhood, Hooke suffered from migraine, tinnitus, dizziness, and bouts of insomnia; 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". 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.
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. His library contained over 3,000 books in Latin, French, Italian, and English. 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. Hooke was buried at St Helen's Church, Bishopsgate, in the City of London but the precise location of his grave is unknown.