Although Robert Hooke was an active researcher and experimentalist in a wide variety of scientific fields, few bear his name. Possibly the most significant is Hooke's Law, a principle of physics that states that the force needed to extend or compress a spring by some distance is proportional to that distance. "Hooke's atom", also known as harmonium or hookium, is so called because its scientific characteristic is a consequence of Hooke's law.
Hooke is celebrated in horological circles for helping design the balance spring regulator, an addition to the balance wheel that greatly increased the accuracy of portable timepieces. Furthermore, some have suggested that he invented the anchor escapement.
He was far from being the first to use a microscope for scientific purposes, but Hooke brought the results to public attention by means of the large and detailed drawings of insects and plant matter in his book Micrographia (1665), providing new insight into the body structures of these organisms which are not visible to the naked eye.
- Hooke’s books: influences around Robert Hooke’s Micrographia: a blog post about Hooke's microscopy based on an exhibition curated by Stephen Greenberg held at the National Library of Medicine in the United States in 2007. Greenberg was Head of Rare Books and Early Manuscripts for the History of Medicine Division at the National Library of Medicine.
- The Micrographia microscope: Jane Desborough, then Associate Curator of Science at the Science Museum in London, explores the Museum's collection of Robert Hooke microscopes.
In particular, Hooke is recognised as having identified the cellular structure of plants, and coining the term. When he looked at a sliver of cork through his microscope, he noticed some "pores" or "cells" in it. The Hooke Medal is awarded every year by the British Society for Cell Biology and recognises an emerging leader in cell biology.
Hooke's early interest in the fossils which he saw in the coastal cliffs at his birthplace of Freshwater in the Isle of Wight, later enhanced through his microscopy, made him a pioneer of geological studies.
Hooke was as keen to reap the benefits of telescopy as of microscopy. As early as October 1664, he had been drawing the lunar surface using 'a thirty foot Glass' (probably his well-documented 36-foot telescope), and when he gained access to a 60-foot instrument he produced even better images. "His drawing of the region around the lunar crater Hipparchus shows what a superlative astronomical draughtsman he really was" (Chapman 2005). "The fact is that this is the first detailed drawing ever of any lunar crater, and it is surprisingly accurate, as you can affirm by comparing it to a modern photo of the region" (Ashworth 2022).
- Robert Hooke models the Moon. In a 2010 clip from the BBC's The sky at night, Sir Patrick Moore and his guest Dr Allan Chapman from Oxford University recreate Hooke's lunar crater modelling experiment. By firing lead bullets into pipe clay, Hooke demonstrated that lunar craters could be the result of objects hitting the Moon.
There are now craters named after Hooke on the Moon and on Mars, and also an asteroid.
The principle of the universal joint has been known since antiquity, but in Helioscopes (1676) Hooke was the first to use the modern term: "The Universal Joynt for all these manner of Operations, ... I shall now more particularly explain" (p.14). As a result, the device is sometimes known as Hooke's joint.
- 'Robert Hooke's 'universal joint' and its application to sundials and the sundial-clock', by Allan Mills in Notes and records: the Royal Society journal of the history of science, vol.61 (2007), pp.219-236. Full text available
Hooke's scientific endeavours have been largely overlooked until relatively recently. Ellen Tan Drake suggests that "Hooke was highly respected in his day, a fact that would seem to be contradicted by his extraordinarily bad luck and almost consistently 'bad press' that plagued him for too long". She points out that,
Robert Hooke "was the first to prove the Power and Towneley hypothesis by experimentation now known as Boyle's Law. He was the first to invent a pocket watch using a spring-balance wheel, but Christiaan Huygens is generally credited with the invention, and the date-inscribed pocket watch he presented to Charles II in 1675 to prove his priority is now lost. He was the first to track a comet in 1665 and propose that it was the same that came in 1618 and predicted that it would come again in another interim of the same duration. But the discovery of the periodicity of some comets is attributed to Edmond Halley who was nine years old at that time. Hooke was the first to express clearly and concisely a theory of combustion based on experimentation but John Mayow has been given the credit. He anticipated Newton in some of the fundamental ideas underlying the Universal Law of Gravitation, notably the concept of centripetal force, necessary for the full comprehension of the gravitational problem, and communicated his ideas to Newton but never received credit. He was the first to describe the iridescent interference colours seen when light falls on a layer of air between two thin glass plates but, ironically, these are known as 'Newton's Rings'. He designed both the great dome of St Paul's Cathedral and the Monument to the fire of 1666, but both are generally attributed to Christopher Wren. Finally, as has been shown in this paper, he was the true founder of the science of geology, but Steno is generally praised for this role." – Drake 2006, p.147.
Because of this, there are few online resources that highlight Robert Hooke's achievements in the scientific field. Useful summaries include:
Return to top | Go to home page
Although Robert Hooke was an active researcher and experimentalist in a wide variety of scientific fields, few bear his name. Possibly the most significant is Hooke's Law, a principle of physics that states that the force needed to extend or compress a spring by some distance is proportional to that distance. "Hooke's atom", also known as harmonium or hookium, is so called because its scientific characteristic is a consequence of Hooke's law.
Hooke is celebrated in horological circles for helping design the balance spring regulator, an addition to the balance wheel that greatly increased the accuracy of portable timepieces. Furthermore, some have suggested that he invented the anchor escapement.
He was far from being the first to use a microscope for scientific purposes, but Hooke brought the results to public attention by means of the large and detailed drawings of insects and plant matter in his book Micrographia (1665), providing new insight into the body structures of these organisms which are not visible to the naked eye.
- Hooke’s books: influences around Robert Hooke’s Micrographia: a blog post about Hooke's microscopy based on an exhibition curated by Stephen Greenberg held at the National Library of Medicine in the United States in 2007. Greenberg was Head of Rare Books and Early Manuscripts for the History of Medicine Division at the National Library of Medicine.
- The Micrographia microscope: Jane Desborough, then Associate Curator of Science at the Science Museum in London, explores the Museum's collection of Robert Hooke microscopes.
In particular, Hooke is recognised as having identified the cellular structure of plants, and coining the term. When he looked at a sliver of cork through his microscope, he noticed some "pores" or "cells" in it. The Hooke Medal is awarded every year by the British Society for Cell Biology and recognises an emerging leader in cell biology.
Hooke's early interest in the fossils which he saw in the coastal cliffs at his birthplace of Freshwater in the Isle of Wight, later enhanced through his microscopy, made him a pioneer of geological studies.
Hooke was as keen to reap the benefits of telescopy as of microscopy. As early as October 1664, he had been drawing the lunar surface using 'a thirty foot Glass' (probably his well-documented 36-foot telescope), and when he gained access to a 60-foot instrument he produced even better images. "His drawing of the region around the lunar crater Hipparchus shows what a superlative astronomical draughtsman he really was" (Chapman 2005). "The fact is that this is the first detailed drawing ever of any lunar crater, and it is surprisingly accurate, as you can affirm by comparing it to a modern photo of the region" (Ashworth 2022).
- Robert Hooke models the Moon. In a 2010 clip from the BBC's The sky at night, Sir Patrick Moore and his guest Dr Allan Chapman from Oxford University recreate Hooke's lunar crater modelling experiment. By firing lead bullets into pipe clay, Hooke demonstrated that lunar craters could be the result of objects hitting the Moon.
There are now craters named after Hooke on the Moon and on Mars, and also an asteroid.
The principle of the universal joint has been known since antiquity, but in Helioscopes (1676) Hooke was the first to use the modern term: "The Universal Joynt for all these manner of Operations, ... I shall now more particularly explain" (p.14). As a result, the device is sometimes known as Hooke's joint.
- 'Robert Hooke's 'universal joint' and its application to sundials and the sundial-clock', by Allan Mills in Notes and records: the Royal Society journal of the history of science, vol.61 (2007), pp.219-236. Full text available
Hooke's scientific endeavours have been largely overlooked until relatively recently. Ellen Tan Drake suggests that "Hooke was highly respected in his day, a fact that would seem to be contradicted by his extraordinarily bad luck and almost consistently 'bad press' that plagued him for too long". She points out that,
Robert Hooke "was the first to prove the Power and Towneley hypothesis by experimentation now known as Boyle's Law. He was the first to invent a pocket watch using a spring-balance wheel, but Christiaan Huygens is generally credited with the invention, and the date-inscribed pocket watch he presented to Charles II in 1675 to prove his priority is now lost. He was the first to track a comet in 1665 and propose that it was the same that came in 1618 and predicted that it would come again in another interim of the same duration. But the discovery of the periodicity of some comets is attributed to Edmond Halley who was nine years old at that time. Hooke was the first to express clearly and concisely a theory of combustion based on experimentation but John Mayow has been given the credit. He anticipated Newton in some of the fundamental ideas underlying the Universal Law of Gravitation, notably the concept of centripetal force, necessary for the full comprehension of the gravitational problem, and communicated his ideas to Newton but never received credit. He was the first to describe the iridescent interference colours seen when light falls on a layer of air between two thin glass plates but, ironically, these are known as 'Newton's Rings'. He designed both the great dome of St Paul's Cathedral and the Monument to the fire of 1666, but both are generally attributed to Christopher Wren. Finally, as has been shown in this paper, he was the true founder of the science of geology, but Steno is generally praised for this role." – Drake 2006, p.147.
Because of this, there are few online resources that highlight Robert Hooke's achievements in the scientific field. Useful summaries include:
Return to top | Go to home page
