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Robert Hooke: Royal College
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As a mechanist, Hooke looked for physical connections in nature through which gravity might operate, and this led him to believe that an aether must exist whereby it (along with light and magnetism) could move or resonate. His thorough-going experimentalism was always leading him to new 'tryalls', and in 1662 and 1665 he reported to the Royal Society experiments conducted on the towers of Westminster Abbey and old St Paul's Cathedral. Identically heavy weights on identically heavy lines were prepared. One was rolled up and placed in one pan of a balance, while the other was set free down the tower while attached to the other balance arm. Would the weight that was now 90 feet closer to the earth become heavier against its rolled-up companion? He found no appreciable change, so he tried it in reverse, as it were, down a deep well on Banstead Downs, in Surrey.
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It was ... probably due to Newton's spite that one of Hooke's gifts to the Society fell through. Hooke had spent little of his money, keeping it locked away in an iron chest. When he was a dying man he told Waller he wanted to give his money after his death, to the Society, so that new quarters, meeting rooms, laboratories, and a library might be constructed. But Hooke had unfortunately not made a will, or at least one was never found. It seems logical that, had Newton wanted to assert the Society's right to the money, based on Waller's testimony, he undoubtedly would have gotten it. Newton, who after becoming president of The Royal Society in 1703 had severed all ties that bound the Society to Hooke, wanted nothing of him.
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Hooke reacted to the impossible task set him by producing a wealth of original ideas over the following 15 years. It would be fair to say that it was through Hooke's flood of ideas that the Society prospered, but equally the demands brought out Hooke's genius to the full. Although the demands meant that he never had time to develop his ideas over time as one would expect a leading scientist to do, on the other hand it seemed to suit his nature to have his mind jump for one half thought out idea to the next. He was elected to the Royal Society on 3 June 1663 and, although he was still receiving no payment, at least the Society was prepared to allow him to become a Fellow without paying the annual fees.
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In his Cutlerian Lecture Lampas, delivered to the Royal Society in 1677, Hooke developed his ideas on combustion when he analysed the parts of a lamp or candle flame. He noticed that the point of combustion appeared to be at the bottom part of the conical flame, where the oil rising up the wick became excited by the heat above it. At a critical point, it was devoured by the aerial nitre, and produced the tulip-shaped inner flame, where the rising sulphurous particles or atoms made contact with the aerial nitre to produce a glowing combustive interface. He ... realized that the interior of the flame did not emit light, but only the tulip-shaped, combustive interface around it. The interior consisted of heated but non-luminous sooty particles that had failed to go off, as it were, and simply rose as greasy smoke. It was within this dark, sooty interior that the non-light-emitting part of the wick lay, and Hooke noticed that when this spent wick fell over, and broke through the combustive interface, it glowed red, as it entered the aerial nitre that surrounded the flame. [19]
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In 1677, after Henry Oldenburg's death, Hooke succeeded him to the post of Secretary of the Royal Society while still maintaining his responsibilities as Curator. Hooke continued in this capacity until 1683 when the post of secretary was filled by Richard Waller who would eventually write Hooke's biography.
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The manuscripts contain Hooke's personal copies of the minutes from the Royal Society meetings between 1661 and 1691. They were dramatically saved from auction last year, following payment of around £1 million.
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