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Robert Hooke: London Surveyor
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Robert Hooke was a true polymath. Author of the influential Micrographia (1665) he was one of the leading natural philosophers of his day. As an inventor, he was second to none. He ... played a major role in the rebuilding of London after the Great Fire, while his diaries give a revealing picture of his lifestyle and milieu in the Restoration metropolis.
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Robert Hooke emerged as one of the leaders of this new age. Born in 1635 in Freshwater, Isle of Wight, he was educated at home until the age of 13 and then at Westminster School. In 1653, he went on to Oxford University. His interests spanned a wide range of topics. Best known as an astronomer and instrument maker, he was ... a skilled physician, surveyor, architect, anatomist and artist.
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Robert Hooke spent his life largely on the Isle of Wight, at Oxford, and in London. He never married, but his diary shows that he was not without affections, and more, for others. On 3 March 1703, Hooke died in London, having amassed a sizable sum of money, which was found in his room at Gresham College. He was buried at St Helen's Bishopsgate, but the precise location of his grave is unknown.
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No portrait survives of Robert Hooke, and his name is somewhat obscure today, due in part to the enmity of his famous, influential, and extremely vindictive colleague, Sir Isaac Newton. Yet Hooke was perhaps the greatest experimental scientist of the seventeenth century. His interests knew no bounds, ranging from physics and astronomy, to chemistry, biology, and geology, to architecture and naval technology; he collaborated or corresponded with scientists as diverse as Christian Huygens, Antony van Leeuwenhoek, Christopher Wren, Robert Boyle, and Isaac Newton. Among other accomplishments, he invented the universal joint, the iris diaphragm, and an early prototype of the respirator; invented the anchor escapement and the balance spring, which made more accurate clocks possible; served as Chief Surveyor and helped rebuild London after the Great Fire of 1666; worked out the correct theory of combustion; assisted Robert Boyle in working out the physics of gases; worked out the physics of elastic materials; invented or improved meteorological instruments such as the barometer, anemometer, and hygrometer; and so on. He was the type of scientist that was then called a virtuoso -- able to contribute findings of major importance in any field of science. It is not surprising that he made important contributions to biology and to paleontology.
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Physicians' College, with its 'gilded pill'-surmounted dome, later came to be popularly ascribed to Wren, until Hooke's long-lost Diary came to light in Guildhall Library around 1890. Bedlam Hospital, with its French chateau style, pavilions, and 540-foot facade, was magnificent by any standards. The wits of the day made the remark that the English housed their lunatics in buildings such as those in which the French housed their Kings! In the original design, Bedlam represented advanced thinking in its accommodation of the mentally ill, with an individual cell for each inmate, which led the comic writer Ned Ward to comment upon the hospital's governors 'I think they were mad that built so costly a College for such a crack-brained Society'. [48] In Bedlam, Hooke had not only produced his own architectural masterpiece, but had created one of the landmarks of London for the next century. It figures in Pope's Dunciad, foreign visitors went to see the antics of the unfortunate patients, and William Hogarth set his last scene of the Rake's Progress in its now squalid and over-crowded interior.
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Hooke was born on the Isle of Wight, July 18, 1635. As a child he survived smallpox, but was scarred physically and emotionally for life. When Hooke was thirteen years old, his father, John Hooke, a clergyman hanged himself. Young Robert had much emotional pain in his youth. Receiving a 100 pound inheritance from his father, Robert Hooke became an orphan of sorts, being sent off to London. In London was the painter Sir Peter Lely, and there, Hooke was to develop his artistic skills.
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London Surveyor