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HOOKE, ROBERT (b. Freshwater, Isle of Wight,
England, 18 July 1635; d. London, England, 3 March
1702), physics.
is studied through human remains. The pursuit of
Hooke's program for geology ultimately shattered the
seventeenth-century preconceptions which confined
his own geological theories.
Perhaps Hooke's most important contribution to
science lay in the field of instrumentation. He added
something to every important instrument developed
in the seventeenth century. He invented the air pump
in its enduring form. He advanced horology and
microscopy. He developed the cross-hair sight for the
telescope, the iris diaphragm, and a screw adjustment
from which the setting could be read directly. He has
been called the founder of scientific meteorology. He
invented the wheel barometer, on which the pivoted
needle registers the pressure. He suggested the freezing
temperature of water as the zero point on the
thermometer and devised an instrument to calibrate
thermometers. His weather clock recorded barometric
pressure, temperature, rainfall, humidity, and wind
velocity on a rotating drum. Although it was not a
scientific instrument, the universal joint was also his
invention. Writing in the eighteenth century, Lalande
called Hooke “the Newton of mechanics.” One might
add that he was the first mechanic of genius whose
talent the mechanical philosophy of nature brought
to bear directly on science.
The year 1677 brought significant changes to
Hooke's life. The death of Henry Oldenburg led to
his nomination as secretary of the Royal Society. For
several years the two men had been mortal enemies.
Convinced that Oldenburg had betrayed the secret
of his spring-driven watch to Huygens, Hooke had
publicly labeled him a “trafficker in intelligence”; but
the Council of the Royal Society had come to Oldenburg's
support. Now he sat in his enemy's position
of power. It proved to be an empty triumph. Public
success merely disguised private decline. Although he
was only forty-two years old in 1677, and destined
to survive another quarter of a century, Hooke had
exhausted his scientific creativity. One year later the
last of his Cutlerian lectures announced Hooke's law.
From there on, everything was downhill.
His tenure as secretary was not successful, and he
stepped down after five years. During that period he
tried to continue Oldenburg's periodical—renamed
Philosophical Collections—but he managed to bring
out only seven issues in all. In 1686 Newton laid
Book I of the Principia before the Society. Hooke was
convinced that he had been robbed again, but hardly
anyone listened to his protestations. And in 1687 his
niece Grace, originally his ward and then his mistress
through a prolonged and tempestuous romance, died.
From that blow he never fully recovered. More and
more he became a recluse and a cynic. A tone of
bitterness pervades the small number of papers that
survive from his final years. In the end he was almost
bedfast. He died on 3 March 1702 in the room at
Gresham College that he had inhabited for nearly
forty years.
Hooke was a difficult man in an age of difficult
men. His life was punctuated with bitter quarrels that
refused to be settled. When he offered criticism of
Hevelius' use of open sights for astronomical observations,
he did it in such a way that the consequences
dragged on for ten years. His conflicts with Oldenburg
and Newton have already been mentioned. It
is only fair to add that the other three men were at
least as difficult in their own right, and that Hooke
won and held the esteem and affection of such men
as Boyle, Wren, and the antiquarian John Aubrey.
Hooke's disposition was probably exacerbated by his
physical appearance. Pepys said of him, while he was
still a young man, that he “is the most and promises
the least of any man in the world that ever I saw.”
As every description testifies, his frame was badly
twisted. Add to his wretched appearance wretched
health. He was a dedicated hypochondriac who never
permitted himself the luxury of feeling well for the
length of a full day. Hooke's spiny character was
nicely proportioned to the daily torment of his existence.
As for his role in the history of science, it is impossible
to avoid the commonplace assessment—that he
never followed up his insights. Indeed, he was incapable
of exploring them in their ultimate depths—as
Newton, for example, could do. Early in his career
Hooke composed a methodological essay that earnestly
advocates orderly procedure and systematic
coverage. It appears almost to be Hooke's judgment
on himself. Typically, it remained unfinished. Waller
records that in his old age Hooke intended to leave
his estate to build a laboratory for the Royal Society
and to found a series of lectures. He procrastinated
in completing his will “till at last this great Design
prov'd an airy Phantom and vanish'd into nothing.”
More than one of Hooke's grand designs proved an
airy phantom and vanished into nothing—at least if
we judge him by the standards of a Newton. Because
of his claim on the law of universal gravitation, the
comparison with Newton inevitably arises, but such
a standard of judgment is unfair to Hooke. If he was
not a Newton, his multifarious contributions to science
in the seventeenth century are beyond denial;
and on the crucial question of circular motion it was
Hooke's insight that put Newton on the track to
universal gravitation. The Royal Society honored its