Robert Hooke

Robert Hooke FRS (/hʊk/; 18 July 1635 – 3 March 1703) was an English polymath who was active as a physicist ("natural philosopher"), 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 (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. 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]".

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.

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 (two boys and two girls); he was frail and not expected to live. Although his father gave him some instruction in English, (Latin) 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 (plus another £10 held over from his grandmother). 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.

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, (despite the fact he did not officially matriculate until 1658.) 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 (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. 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.