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Robert Hooke: Isaac Newton
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Hooke was a contemporary - and a rival - of Isaac Newton. He was a polymath who made major contributions to many scientific disciplines, including astronomy, palaeontology, physics, and biology. For example, he was one of the first people to examine cells under the microscope.
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In many ways, Hooke and Newton clashed because of their similarities; both men took themselves seriously, and guarded their discoveries jealously. On the other hand, Hooke divided his time and talent among many different tasks while Newton possessed the single-minded determination — and financial resources — to isolate himself and follow a problem to the end. And by the time Hooke had his final dispute with Newton, the aging savant had claimed credit for someone else's idea or invention once too often. Even Hooke's coffeehouse buddies didn't quite believe him.
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Newton refused to correspond with Hooke any further, Hooke had written a third letter to Newton, that Newton refused to answer. And it is this third letter that is of particular interest. This letter was written January 6, 1680, and in it, Hooke spoke of his theory of gravity. Hooke wrote; "But my supposition is that the Attraction always is in a duplicate proportion to the Distance from the Center Reciprocal, and Consequently that the Velocity will be in a subduplicate proportion to the Attraction and Consequently as Kepler supposes Reciprocal to the Distance." This was the main letter Hooke used as evidence when he claimed Newton had robbed him of his theory, but Hooke had no answer from Newton acknowledging Hooke's theory.
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Gravitation was a subject which occupied Hooke's interests for well over twenty-five years before Newton published his Principia. According to Aristotle, the Earth could be the only gravitational body, as it drew 'heavy' things towards itselL By the 166()s... astronomers were considering the possibility that gravity could be possessed by other bodies as well, such as the planets. The nature of gravitation was in itself mysterious, though in his lunar observations in Micrographia (p.245) Hooke had argued that the even, spherical shape of the moon indicated that it must possess a gravitational power which caused everything to fall evenly around its centre. The same went for the planets.
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Newton's animosity towards Hooke extended to the removal of Hooke's portrait in the Royal Society (long believed destroyed but recently discovered) and an attempt (prevented) to have Hooke's papers in the Society burned. It is largely thanks to Newton that Hooke's name remained relatively unknown until the latter part of the 20th Century, although Hooke's own unsympathetic character was undoubtedly ... a factor.
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In 1672 Hooke attempted to prove that the Earth moves in an ellipse around the Sun and six years later proposed that the inverse square law of gravitation may explain planetary motions. He stated: "my supposition is that the Attraction always is in a duplicate proportion to the Distance from the Center Reciprocal." Hooke seemed unable to give a mathematical proof of his conjectures... he claimed priority over the inverse square law and this led to a bitter dispute with Newton who, as a consequence, removed all references to Hooke from the Principia.
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