Dictionary of Scientific Biography

Richard Waller called “his first and last Mistress”—mechanics. His role in the history of science is inextricably bound to his skill in mechanics and his allied perception of nature as a great machine.

When his father died in 1648, Hooke inherited £100. Since he had displayed some artistic talent, his family packed him off to London, where his legacy was to finance an apprenticeship to Sir Peter Lely. Hooke decided to save his money; and it was his good fortune that Richard Busby, the master of Westminster School, befriended him and took him into his home. The teacher had recognized the pupil. Not only did Hooke learn Latin, the staple of the secondary curriculum, together with Greek and a smattering of Hebrew; he also discovered mathematics. By his own account he devoured the first six books of Euclid in a week, and he proceeded to apply geometry to mechanics. Nor was mathematics all. By his own account again, he learned to play twenty lessons on the organ and invented thirty ways of flying. Having exhausted the resources of Westminster, he moved on to Oxford, where he entered Christ Church as a chorister in 1653.

Apparently Hooke never took a bachelor's degree. The only Oxford degree associated with his name is the Master of Arts, to which he was nominated in 1663. Meanwhile, Oxford had given him more than a thousand degrees could match. At the time of his arrival the university was the home of the brilliant group around which the Royal Society later crystallized. John Wilkins, Thomas Willis, Seth Ward, William Petty, John Wallis, Christopher Wren, Robert Boyle—these and others, some already recognized scholars, some still students, some merely resident near the university—convened regularly for the discussion of scientific matters. Hooke soon found his place in the circle. They recognized and drew upon his talent in mechanics, and they gave him in return his introduction to the new world of thought then fomenting the scientific revolution. For a time Hooke was an assistant to Willis. Willis introduced him to Boyle, and as Boyle's assistant Hooke launched his independent career.

Typically, Hooke's initial triumphs were mechanical inventions. Although Boyle's interest focused primarily on chemistry, the report of Guericke's air pump caught his attention. He instructed Hooke to devise an improved instrument, and the modern air pump duly appeared. With the air pump and with Hooke's assistance, Boyle conducted the experiments that concluded in Boyle's law, published in 1662. As with so much, Hooke's role in the investigation is unclear. Boyle never suggested that he played any part; and Hooke, who was not reluctant to assert himself, never claimed that he did. Hooke was Boyle's paid assistant at that time, however, and the position of assistant may well have seemed to both to preclude any rights of discovery. A number of historians assign the discovery to Hooke without further ado, and almost no one wants to deny outright that he participated in it.

In 1658, at the same time that he developed the air pump, Hooke turned his attention to chronometers. It was widely recognized that an accurate portable clock could solve the critical navigational problem of determining longitude. Hooke reasoned that one might be constructed by the “use of Springs instead of Gravity for the making of a Body vibrate in any Posture.” That is, by attaching a spring to the arbor of the balance wheel, he would replace the pendulum with a vibrating wheel that could be moved because it oscillated around its own center of gravity. This is, of course, the principle of the watch, and on this principle a marine chronometer with which longitude could be determined was constructed in the eighteenth century. Once again, the exact nature of Hooke's contribution to clockmaking is shrouded in mystery. About 1660 three men of means—Boyle, Robert Moray, and William Brouncker, all later prominent in the Royal Society—considered backing Hooke's invention. Should the clock have worked, the profits might well have been immense. A patent was drawn up; but before the agreement was completed, Hooke withdrew, apparently demanding of his backers assurances they were unwilling to give.

In 1674 Christiaan Huygens constructed a watch controlled by a spiral spring attached to the balance; and Hooke, suspecting that his invention had been peddled to Huygens, cried foul. Working with the clockmaker Thomas Tompion, he made a similiar watch to present to the king; and on it he defiantly engraved the assertion “Robert Hook inven. 1658. T. Tompion fecit 1675.” Despite his contentions, there is no evidence that his watch of 1658, if indeed it worked, employed a spiral spring, the device of crucial importance. On the other hand, his pamphlet that pronounced Hooke's law, De potentia restitutiva (1678), employed a spiral spring as one example and offered a demonstration (faulty, to be sure) that the vibrations of springs obeying Hooke's Law are isochronal. It is worth adding that neither Hooke's nor Huygens' watch worked satisfactorily enough to determine longitude. Although the exact nature of Hooke's contributions cannot be determined with any assurance, knowledgeable men at the time considered him to have made important inventions in chronometry; and historians are unanimous in agreement.