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Robert Hooke: Great Fire
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Description: Famous for the law of elasticity which bears his name, Robert Hooke is one of the most important pioneers of modern science. In addition to Hooke’s law, he ... built the first Gregorian telescope, discovered plant cells by using an early microscope, and stated the law of inverse squares. In this latest title in the Great Minds of Science series, author Mary Gow examines Hooke’s impact of Robert Hooke, whose breadth of interests have influenced nearly every field of science.
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At Westminster, Robert Hooke found his feet in the city that was to provide the theatre of operations for the greater part of his career. Dr Busby, who was still within the first decade of his fifty-five-year reign as Head Master of what he was turning into the most intellectually distinguished school of the seventeenth century, quickly recognized Hooke's genius. At Westminster, Hooke acquired a mastery of ancient languages, learned to play the organ, contrived flying machines and mastered the first six books of Euclid's Elements in a week. He remained on warm terms with Dr Busby for the rest of the Head Master's eighty-nine-year life, undertaking architectural design work for him and for Westminster Abbey, and mentioning him in his Diary.
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Robert Hooke was born at Freshwater on the Isle of Wight on 18 July 1635 to Reverend John Hooke and his wife Cecily Gyles. As a child Robert was quite sickly and for the first seven years of his life his parents feared he would not survive. He showed talent in drawing, and spent much of his time making mechanical toys and devices including a model ship complete with rigging and small guns that could fire as it sailed along.
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Looking toward the stars as the inventor of the reflecting telescope, Hooke's ventures into astronomy include the first inference to the rotation of Jupiter and the description of its Great Red Spot. He ... observed the rotation of Mars, attempted to observe and describe parallax, and noted one of the earliest examples of a double star. In addition to its voluminous references to optical microscopy, Micrographia includes notes on Hooke's observations of lunar craters and speculates on their origin. He formulated the theory of planetary motion, as a problem in mechanics, which led Newton to his theories surrounding gravitational laws. Although his twenty-year work on gravity was innovative, it lacked some of the mathematical sophistication of Newton's, which quickly overshadowed Hooke's theories and speculation.
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Hooke was the first to report the Great Red Spot of Jupiter and the first to establish the rotation of the giant planet. He formulated the theory of planetary motion as a problem in mechanics, and pioneered the scientific trail that led Newton to his goal in the formulation of the law of gravitation. As a scientist, Hooke made useful contributions to the wave theory of light. His interests ranged from these matters to pre-Daltonian atomic studies, astronomy, earthquakes and the physics of spring mechanisms. He set the thermo-metrical zero at the freezing point of water and studied the relationship of barometrical readings to changes in the weather; he invented a land carriage, a diving bell, a method of telegraphy and he and ascertained the number of vibrations corresponding to musical notes.
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Hooke was undoubtedly an insightful and ingenious theorist of great influence even though he never quite succeeded in establishing the truth of any of his theoretical ideas. His industry and ingenuity has... ensured his position in the history of science. He invented the universal joint, the iris diaphragm, a calibrated screw adjustment for telescopes, and the wheel barometer. He was also one of the first to take seriously the idea that fossils represented the genuine remains of ancient creatures (previously it was assumed they were simply features in the rocks which accidentally mimicked living forms), and was led by his knowledge of them to conclude that the surfaces of the earth could change, land giving way to sea and vice versa, and that the number and kinds of species of plants and animals were not fixed. Perhaps his most lasting monument, however, is his one major book, Micrographia (1665), the first major work of microscopy. Although justly famous for its meticulous and genuinely surprising descriptions of microscopic phenomena, and for its superb illustrations, Micrographia also includes some of Hooke's most fruitful theoretical speculations and his most profound comments upon good practice in natural philosophy.
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