Hooke, Robert
Born Freshwater, Isle of Wight, England, 18 July 1635
Died London, England, 3 March 1703
Robert Hooke was one of the foremost experimenters of the 17th century and a remarkable inventor of astronomical instruments. He was among the first to suggest the inverse‐square law of gravitation and the periodicity of comets.
Hooke was the son of John Hooke, curate of All Saints Church in Freshwater, and his second wife Cicely Giles. A sickly child, he was not expected to survive childhood.
At a young age Hooke showed artistic and mechanical talent; he could draw and paint and build wooden models of machines that worked. When he was 13, his father died, and Hooke was sent to London to be apprenticed to the portrait painter Sir Peter Lely, but the odor of the oil paint made him sick. He was then sent to Westminster School. The headmaster, Dr. Busby, immediately recognized the boy's genius when Hooke learned the first six books of Euclid in a week, taught himself to play the organ, and learned...
Selected References
- Bennett, J. A. et al. (2003). London's Leonardo: The Life and Work of Robert Hooke. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
- Espinasse, Margaret (1962). Robert Hooke. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
- Jardine, Lisa (2004). The Curious Life of Robert Hooke: The Man Who Measured London. New York: HarperCollins.Google Scholar
- Tan Drake, Ellen (1996). Restless Genius: Robert Hooke and His Earthly Thoughts. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
- Westfall, Richard S. (1967). “Hooke and the Law of Universal Gravitation: A Reappraisal of a Reappraisal.” British Journal for the History of Science 3: 245–261.MATHCrossRefGoogle Scholar