Robert Hooke and his Contemporaries

Abstract

MR. JAMES'S letter is of interest as recording that he personally does not agree with my opinion of the character and temperament of Oldenburg, but it has little objective content. In my article I referred briefly to some of the facts on which I base my conclusions: the affair of the watch, where Oldenburg, who had a (secret ?) financial interest in a rival invention, went out of his way to decry Hooke's achievements, and certainly went beyond what he would have known: the undoubted political, although no doubt innocent, correspondence with foreigners, which he denied: the opinion of Sydenham. I may further point out that in his correspondence with Spinoza, extending over the years 1661–76, in which the scientific discoveries of the day are freely discussed, and the names of Boyle and Huygens occur again and again, there is only one reference to Hooke's work (to the ” Micrographia”, without mention of Hooke's name).