Archives and records

Stephen Inwood mentions manuscript primary sources for Hooke studies in the archives of the Royal Society, the British Library, the City of London, Oxford University, Trinity College Cambridge and the Mercers' Company (Inwood 2002, pp.471-2).

The following links lead to search results for the phrase "Robert Hooke" in some of these archives. It should be borne in mind that:

  1. the surname may sometimes be recorded as "Hook" in the original documents,
  2. the forename may be abbreviated,
  3. the searches may also find records for other, unrelated, people called Robert Hooke, and
  4. archives often hold items which have not yet been recorded in their online catalogues.

Sample searches:

There are also Hooke manuscripts in other collections, including:

Hooke at the Royal Society

The Centre for Editing Lives and Letters at University College London has digitized and transcribed extracts from the Royal Society's journal books, together with the rough minutes for the period of Hooke's secretaryship of the Society and a number of supplementary papers, which were found with the manuscript and include contemporary indexes. The folio comprises over 500 pages in all.

The recovery in 2006 of this material, previously thought lost, has been documented by Robyn Adams and Lisa Jardine:

 
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Hooke's diary

Hooke's manuscript diary at the Guildhall Library (Image 1)

Hooke letter to Newton

Facsimile of a letter to Isaac Newton, written in Hooke's own hand from Gresham College, 1679 (Image 2)


References

  1. Inwood (2002): Stephen Inwood, The Man who knew too much (Macmillan, 2002).

 
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Image acknowledgments

So far as we know, all of the images reproduced on this page are in the public domain. We shall immediately take down on demand any that are still in copyright.

  1. Photograph of Hooke's diary on display at Guildhall Art Gallery, 22nd July 2019, via Flickr, taken by Andrea Clayton Vail, reproduced under this licence.
  2. Facsimile of letter from Robert Hooke to Sir Isaac Newton, written from Gresham College, January 17th, 1679. Image from Early science in Oxford, by R.T. Gunther, vol. X, p.55.

 
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Page last amended 26th January 2025