HOOKE, ROBERT (b. Freshwater, Isle of Wight, England, 18 July 1635; d. London, England, 3 March 1702), physics.

In 1659 and 1660 the Oxford circle dissolved with the collapse of the Protectorate and the restoration of the Stuarts. Relieved of their academic appointments, which many of them owed to their Puritan sympathies, most of the circle moved back to London, where they continued their meetings and formalized them in November 1660. Two years later the group acknowledged the king's patronage by taking the name Royal Society. A number of the early members knew Hooke from Oxford days; and others were impressed by his first publication, a pamphlet on capillary action which appeared in 1661. As a result Sir Robert Moray proposed him for the post of curator of experiments late in 1662. With untroubled confidence the Society charged him to furnish each meeting “with three or four considerable Experiments” as well as to try such other experiments as the members might suggest.

Probably no man could have come as close to fulfilling the impossible demand as Hooke did. He provided the major portion of intellectual content at the weekly meetings. It is hard to imagine that the Royal Society would have survived the apathy that succeeded its initial burst of enthusiasm without the stimulus of Hooke's experiments, demonstrations, and discourses. Some commentators have suggested that the Society's good fortune was Hooke's calamity. Its excessive demands imposed on him a pattern of frantic activity that made it impossible for him ever to finish a piece of work. On the contrary, the tendency to flit from idea to insight without pause was Hooke's innate characteristic. He never performed so well as he did during the first fifteen years of his tenure as curator, when, with a thousand demands on his time, he poured out a continuous stream of brilliant ideas. When the demands relaxed, the temper of his mind went slack as well; and his creative period came to a close. Far from destroying him, the Royal Society provided the unique milieu in which he could function at his best.

In 1664 Sir John Cutler founded a lectureship in mechanics for Hooke; it carried an annual salary of £50. Although Hooke's initial appointment as curator had involved no remuneration, the Royal Society now appointed him to the position for life with a salary of £30, together with the privilege of lodging at Gresham College. By September 1664 he had taken up residence there in the chambers that were his home until his death. Until 1676 he was in charge of the Society's repository of rarities, and he served as librarian until 1679. In 1665 the position of Gresham professor of geometry added a further duty, and a further salary of £50. Hooke's financial position was in fact far less secure than it may appear. The Royal Society was perpetually in financial straits and unable to sustain its obligations. As for his salary as lecturer, Cutler made a career of bestowing in public benefactions that he refused in private to fulfill, and Hooke had to take him to court to obtain his due.

In 1666 another job, probably the most onerous of all in its demands on his time, came Hooke's way. The great fire of London offered a considerable opportunity to one with Hooke's technical skills. Almost on the morrow of the disaster he came forward with a plan to rearrange the city wholly by laying it out on a rectangular grid. The plan won the approval of the city fathers; although it never approached implementation, it did promote his nomination as one of three surveyors appointed by the city to reestablish property lines and to supervise the rebuilding. As surveyor, Hooke was thrown into daily commerce with Sir Christopher Wren, one of the men appointed by the royal government to the same task of rebuilding. Wren and Hooke dominated and guided the work, and cemented a friendship that lasted throughout their lives. To Hooke the position of surveyor was a financial boon, more than compensating for the uncertainty of his other income. It also provided an outlet for his artistic talents. The title “surveyor” is misleading, for if he surveyed, he also functioned as an architect. A number of prominent buildings, such as the Royal College of Physicians, Bedlam Hospital, and the Monument, were his work. Hooke's reputation as a many-sided genius has tended to focus on his manifold scientific activities. His career as an architect adds another dimension to his achievement.

The ten years following the fire constituted a period of hectic activity. The very time when the demands of his surveyorship were at their peak was also a period of productive scientific work. To be sure, Hooke's scientific career was already well launched. In 1665, the year before the fire, he had published Micrographia, the most important book that he produced. If not the first publication of microscopical observations, Micrographia was the first great work devoted to them; and its impact rivaled that of Galileo's Sidereus nuncius half a century before. For the first time, descriptions of microscopical observations were accompanied by profuse illustrations—another display of Hooke's artistic talent. In the public mind, Hooke's name became identified with microscopical observations; and when Thomas Shadwell wrote his wretched physico-libidinous farce, The Virtuoso, he modeled the leading character on Hooke. Hooke attended a performance in June 1676: “Dammd Doggs. Vindica me Deus, people almost pointed.”

No amount of ignorant ridicule could dim the