LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Robert Hooke: Robert Boyle
built 613 days ago
Robert Hooke, the son of a clergyman in Freshwater on the Isle of Wight, was born on July 18, 1635. He was too sickly for regular schooling until he was 13, when, left an orphan with a modest inheritance, he entered Westminster School. Later he earned his way as a chorister at Christ Church, Oxford, and attended Westminster College, graduating with his master's degree in 1663. Hooke remained at Oxford, where he became assistant to Robert Boyle. Together they conducted many experiments on the effects of reduced air pressure, using an air pump that had been designed and constructed by Hooke.
Source:
While it goes without saying that Hooke was an experimentalist in the Baconian tradition, it is obvious to anyone who reads Hooke's writings that he was no methodological purist. As every modern scientist now knows, no original investigator can be the rigid adherent of a pre-determined method, for creativity in science is more than recipe-following. Robert Boyle, and Robert Hooke... were probably the first scientists to encounter this fact of life, for while they were not the first men to perform experiments, they were the first to undertake whole courses of experiments and, in Hooke's case, conduct them in disciplines as diverse as physics and physiology. Micrographia, which published the results of a series of observations and experiments conducted between 1661 and 1664, should be required reading for every science undergraduate, for it amply demonstrates how brilliantly eclectic, yet how tightly controlled, a series of physical investigations can be. It showed how the microscopical examination of ice crystals could lead to a discussion of atomic structures; how the first recognition of the cellular structure of wood initiated research into the role of air in combustion; and how the anatomical description of a fly developed into an experimental essay in aerodynamics, acoustics, and wave-patterns.
Source:
In 1655 Hooke was employed by Robert Boyle to construct the Boylean air pump. Five years later, Hooke discovered his law of elasticity, which states that the stretching of a solid body (e.g., metal, …
Source:
In January 2006, a remarkable find vindicated at least one of Hooke's priority claims. An auction-house representative realized he was examining a 320-year-old volume of Hooke's notes, which included detailed accounts of Hooke's work on balance-spring watches. Unsurprisingly, the notes ... revealed a few more of Hooke's spats, even one with his patron Robert Boyle.
Source:
Micrographia ... contains Hooke's, or perhaps Boyle and Hooke's, ideas on combustion. Hooke's experiments led him to conclude that combustion involves a substance that is mixed with air, a statement with which modern scientists would agree, but that was not widely understood, if at all, in the seventeenth century. Hooke went on to conclude that respiration also involves a specific component of the air.[3] Partington even goes so far as to claim that if "Hooke had continued his experiments on combustion it is probable that he would have discovered oxygen".[4]
Source:
MORE ABOUT
Robert Boyle