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Robert Hooke: Centuries
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In the 17th century the English scientist Robert Hooke suggested that it might be possible to imitate the process by which a silkworm produces silk. He proposed forcing a liquid through a small opening and letting it harden into a fiber.
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The microscope was invented some thirty years before Robert Hooke was born. The Yorkshire scientist Henry Power had published microscopical observations before Hooke, and in 1661, Marcello Malphigi had used the instrument to provide clinching evidence in favour of Harvey's theory of blood circulation when he discovered the capillary vessels in the lungs of a frog. Yet for over half a century after its invention, the microscope had been a poor relation to the telescope in terms of its ability to produce fundamental scientific discoveries. Not until Robert Hooke published his own microscopical researches, in 1665, was it made manifest to the scientific world that the microscope revealed an organized realm of nature that was as diverse in its structures and as vast in its scale as the telescopic universe. For centuries, indeed, and long before the invention of the telescope, philosophers had speculated about the vastness of space, though no one had thought seriously about the existence of living creatures that were smaller than cheese-mites or inanimate objects smaller than dust particles. It is true that the atomists had conjectured about the existence of the minuscule particles that composed matter, but these had been objects of a philosophical character, which held out no hope of physical detection.
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Hooke died in 1703. Written out of the history books, he was described as a ‘lean, bent and ugly man’. For centuries it was believed he avoided having his portrait painted – none were found and some grotesque hook-nosed cartoons stood in their stead.
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This is the draft of a short biography of the 17th-century natural philosopher Robert Hooke. The full version will be appearing in the Encyclopedia of Life Sciences (ELS), a huge electronic and print project published by Macmillan.
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Britain's leading academic body paid $1.75 million Tuesday for a 17th-century manuscript by pioneering scientist Robert Hooke, winning a campaign to keep the document in the country just before it was to be auctioned. The 520-page manuscript offers insight into the birth of modern science.
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