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HOOKE, ROBERT (b. Freshwater, Isle of Wight,
England, 18 July 1635; d. London, England, 3 March
1702), physics.
own wisdom when the members attended his funeral
as a body.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
I. ORIGINAL WORKS.
Micrographia (London, 1665) is
readily available in reprint eds. (New York-Weinheim,
1961). Five vols. of R. T. Gunther, Early Science in Oxford,
14 vols. (Oxford, 1923-1945), bear the title The Life and
Work of Robert Hooke. Vols. VI and VII contain extracts
from Thomas Birch's History of the Royal Society that
mention Hooke, extracts from Waller and Derham (see
below) and from Hooke's papers in the Philosophical
Transactions, and letters. Vol. VIII reproduces the Lectiones
Cutlerianae. Vol. X reproduces Hooke's earliest publication,
the pamphlet of 1661 on capillary phenomena, and
publishes his diary for the years 1688-1693. Vol. XIII
reproduces the Micrographia. The Diary of Robert Hooke,
M.A., M.D., F.R.S., 1672-1680, Henry W. Robinson and
Walter Adams, eds. (London, 1935), covers an earlier period
than the Gunther diary. The Posthumous Works of
Robert Hooke, M.D., S.R.S., Geom. Prof. Gresh., &c.,
Richard Waller, ed. (London, 1705); and Philosophical
Experiments and Observations of the Late Eminent Dr.
Robert Hooke, S.R.S. and Geom. Prof. Gresh. and Other
Eminent Virtuoso's in His Time, William Derham, ed.
(London, 1726), are two other important sources of his
work. Geoffrey Keynes has published A Bibliography of
Dr. Robert Hooke (New York, 1960).
II. SECONDARY LITERATURE.
The best contemporary
sources on Hooke's life are John Aubrey's sketch in Brief
Lives, I (Oxford, 1898), 409-416; and Richard Waller's
biography, prefaced to the Posthumous Works. See also
John Ward, Lives of the Professors of Gresham College
(London, 1740), pp. 169-193. Hooke has recently been the
subject of a more extended, perhaps excessively enamored,
biography: Margaret 'Espinasse, Robert Hooke (London,
1956). Among the innumerable general articles on him,
E. N. da C. Andrade, “Robert Hooke,” in Proceedings of
the Royal Society,201A (1950), 439-473, is of special
importance. There is also a general discussion of his scientific
career in the introduction by Richard S. Westfall to
a reprint ed. of the Posthumous Works (New York, 1969).
Mary Hesse has published two articles devoted to general
aspects of his scientific thought: “Hooke's Philosophical
Algebra,” in Isis,57 (1966), 67-83; and “Hooke's
Vibration
Theory and the Isochrony of Springs,” ibid., 433-441.
On Hooke and gravitation, see the following (listed
chronologically): Philip E. B. Jourdain, “Robert Hooke as
a Precursor of Newton,” in Monist,23 (1913), 353-385;
Louise Diehl Patterson, “Hooke's Gravitation Theory and
Its Influence on Newton,” in Isis,40 (1949), 327-341,
and
41 (1950), 32-45; Alexander Koyré, “A Note on Robert
Hooke,” ibid.,41 (1950), 195-196, a commentary on
Patterson's
article; and “An Unpublished Letter of Robert
Hooke to Isaac Newton,” ibid.,43 (1952), 312-327;
Johannes Lohne, “Hooke versus Newton,” in
Centaurus,7 (1960), 6-52; and Richard S. Westfall, “Hooke and the
Law of Universal Gravitation,” in British Journal of the
History of Science,3 (1967), 245-261.
For Hooke's contributions to clockmaking, see A. R.
Hall, “Robert Hooke and Horology,” in Notes and Records.
Royal Society of London,8 (1950-1951), 167-177. His work
on combustion is treated in D. J. Lysaght, “Hooke's Theory
of Combustion,” in Ambix,1 (1937), 93-108; Douglas
McKie, “Fire and the Flamma Vitalis: Boyle, Hooke and
Mayow,” in Science, Medicine and History, Essays ... in
Honour of Charles Singer, E. Ashworth Underwood, ed.,
2 vols. (London, 1953), I, 469-488; and H. D. Turner,
“Robert Hooke and Theories of Combustion,” in Centaurus,4 (1956), 297-310. The best discussion of Hooke's
optics is in A. I. Sabra, Theories of Light From Descartes
to Newton (London, 1967), pp. 187-195, 251-264, 276-284,
321-333; see also Richard S. Westfall, “The Development
of Newton's Theory of Color,” in Isis,53 (1962),
339-358;
and “Newton and His Critics on the Nature of Colors,”
in Archives internationales d'histoire des sciences,15
(1962),
47-58. On Hooke as a geologist, see A. P. Rossiter, “The
First English Geologist,” in Durham University Journal,27
(1935), 172-181; W. N. Edwards, “Robert Hooke as a
Geologist and Evolutionist,” in Nature,137 (1936),
96-97;
and a commentary on Edwards' article by Rossiter, “Hooke
as Geologist,” ibid., 455.
