Robert Hooke

Robert Hooke
FRS
c. 1680 Portrait of a Mathematician by Mary Beale, conjectured to be of Hooke[1][2] but also conjectured to be of Isaac Barrow[3]
Born18 July 1635
Freshwater, Isle of Wight, England
Died3 March 1703(1703-03-03) (aged 67)[a]
London, England
Resting placeSt Helen's Church, Bishopsgate
Alma materChrist Church, Oxford
Known forBalance spring
Conical pendulum
Constant force escapement
Cymatics
Discovery of Gamma Arietis
Discovery of cell
Discovery of Great Red Spot
Hooke's law
Hooke's joint
Hooke's instrument
Hooke's wheel
Micrographia
Microscopy
Portable camera obscura
Reticle
Schlieren
Shadowgraph
Structural coloration
Sash window
Tin can telephone
AwardsFRS (1663)
Scientific career
FieldsPhysics and Biology
InstitutionsUniversity of Oxford
Academic advisorsJohn Wilkins, Robert Boyle
Signature

Robert Hooke FRS (/hʊk/; 18 July 1635 – 3 March 1703)[4][a] was an English polymath who was active as a physicist ("natural philosopher"), astronomer, geologist, meteorologist and architect.[5] He is credited as one of the first scientists to investigate living things at microscopic scale in 1665,[6] using a compound microscope that he designed.[7] Hooke was an impoverished scientific inquirer in young adulthood who went on to become one of the most important scientists of his time.[8] 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.[9][8] 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]".[10]

Hooke was a Fellow of the Royal Society and from 1662, he was its first Curator of Experiments.[9] From 1665 to 1703, he was also Professor of Geometry at Gresham College.[11] 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.[12] In 1664, Hooke identified the rotations of Mars and Jupiter.[11] Hooke's 1665 book Micrographia, in which he coined the term cell, encouraged microscopic investigations.[13][14] Investigating optics – specifically light refraction – Hooke inferred a wave theory of light.[15] His is the first-recorded hypothesis of the cause of the expansion of matter by heat,[16] of air's composition by small particles in constant motion that thus generate its pressure,[17] and of heat as energy.[18]

In physics, Hooke inferred that gravity obeys an inverse square law and arguably was the first to hypothesise such a relation in planetary motion,[19][20] a principle Isaac Newton furthered and formalised in Newton's law of universal gravitation.[21] Priority over this insight contributed to the rivalry between Hooke and Newton. In geology and palaeontology, Hooke originated the theory of a terraqueous globe,[22] 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.[23] By identifying fossils of extinct species, Hooke presaged the theory of biological evolution.[22][24]

  1. ^ Griffing (2020).
  2. ^ Griffing (2021).
  3. ^ Whittaker (2021).
  4. ^ a b Singer (1976), p. 116.
  5. ^ Singer (1976), p. 115.
  6. ^ 'Espinasse (1956), p. 54.
  7. ^ Gase (2019).
  8. ^ a b Inwood (2003), pp. 4, 5.
  9. ^ a b Aubrey (1898), p. 411.
  10. ^ Chapman (1996).
  11. ^ a b O'Connor & Robertson (2002).
  12. ^ Harsch (2006), pp. 867–9.
  13. ^ Gest (2004).
  14. ^ Gest (2009).
  15. ^ Davidson (2015).
  16. ^ Inwood (2003), pp. 257, 258.
  17. ^ Gribbin & Gribbin (2017), pp. 140, 141.
  18. ^ Inwood (2003), p. 299.
  19. ^ Aubrey (1898), pp. 413–415.
  20. ^ Gribbin & Gribbin (2017), p. 150.
  21. ^ Chisholm (1911).
  22. ^ a b Drake (2006), p. 135.
  23. ^ Gribbin & Gribbin (2017), p. 3.
  24. ^ Drake (1996), p. 96.


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