Johannes Kepler

NAME Johannes Kepler. He is occasionally rendered in older English texts as "Johann Kepler." 

WHAT FAMOUS FOR Johannes Kepler was a German mathematician and astronomer best known for his three laws of planetary motion, which established that planets orbit the Sun in ellipses rather than perfect circles and that their speeds vary depending on their distance from the Sun. His analysis of Tycho Brahe's observational data led him to discover these laws, published first in Astronomia Nova (1609) and completed in Harmonice Mundi (1619). His work provided crucial evidence for the heliocentric model of Copernicus and later underpinned Isaac Newton's theory of universal gravitation. (1) 

BIRTH Johannes Kepler was born on December 27, 1571, at the Free Imperial City of Weil der Stadt, roughly 50 miles west of Stuttgart in what is now Germany. He arrived as a premature "seven-month" child, a fact he later documented with characteristic precision, noting the pregnancy had lasted exactly 224 days, 9 hours, and 53 minutes. (2)

Kepler's birthplace, in Weil der Stadt, Germany By MarkusHagenlocher

FAMILY BACKGROUND Kepler's father, Heinrich Kepler, earned a precarious living as a mercenary soldier and abandoned the family when Johannes was five years old; Kepler himself later described him as "vicious, inflexible, quarrelsome, and doomed to a bad end." 

His mother, Katharina Guldenmann, was the daughter of an innkeeper and worked as a healer and herbalist, though Kepler described her too in unflattering terms as "small, thin, swarthy, gossiping and quarrelsome." 

His paternal grandfather, Sebald Kepler, had served as mayor of Weil der Stadt, while his maternal grandfather was an innkeeper and mayor of the nearby village of Eltingen. (2) (3)

CHILDHOOD Kepler was introduced to astronomy at an early age and, at age six, observed the Great Comet of 1577; two years later his mother took him to a hilltop to witness a lunar eclipse. 

Around the same period he survived a severe bout of smallpox that left his hands partially crippled and his eyesight permanently impaired with multiple vision, afflictions that made him unsuited for physical labor but pushed him toward intellectual pursuits. 

He spent time being raised largely by his grandparents while his parents were often absent, and guests at his grandfather's inn were reportedly astonished by the boy's ability to solve numerical problems. (4)

EDUCATION Kepler attended the Tübinger Stift at the University of Tübingen, where he studied philosophy and theology while proving himself a superb mathematician. 

He earned a reputation as a skillful astrologer even as a student, casting horoscopes for his fellow students, and his mathematics professor Michael Maestlin introduced him to the Copernican heliocentric theory. He passed his Master's examination in 1591 and continued as a graduate student before being recommended, near the end of his studies, for a teaching post rather than the ministry he had originally intended to pursue. (5) 

CAREER RECORD 1594 Kepler accepted a position as teacher of mathematics and astronomy at the Protestant school in Graz, Austria, at the age of 23.

1600 Kepler first met the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe on February 4, at Benátky nad Jizerou near Prague, where Brahe's new observatory was being constructed; he stayed as a guest for two months analyzing Brahe's observations of Mars.

1601 Kepler was supported directly by Tycho Brahe, who assigned him to analyze planetary observations; after Brahe's unexpected death on October 24, Kepler was appointed his successor as Imperial Mathematician to Emperor Rudolf II.

1609 Kepler published his first two laws of planetary motion in Astronomia Nova (New Astronomy).

1611 Kepler published Dioptrice, a study of telescopic optics that helped legitimize Galileo's telescopic discoveries.

1619, Kepler outlined his third law of planetary motion, discovered on March 8, 1618, in Harmonice Mundi (Harmony of the Worlds).

1628, following the military successes of General Wallenstein's armies during the Thirty Years' War, Kepler was appointed an official adviser to Wallenstein, providing astronomical calculations and occasional horoscopes.

APPEARANCE Kepler was described as short, slight, and physically fragile. His bout with smallpox as a young child left him with permanently damaged eyesight—including severe myopia and multiple vision (polyopia)—as well as skin lesions and crippled, weak hands. Contemporaries described his appearance as modest, studious, and somewhat unkempt. (6)

Portrait by August Köhler 1910 after 1620 original

FASHION Kepler dressed in the sober, dark clothing typical of a Lutheran academic and court mathematician of his era, favoring plain scholarly attire over ostentation. There is little evidence he took any particular interest in fashion, his energies being devoted almost entirely to his studies. (6)

CHARACTER Kepler possessed an intensely curious, rigorous, and open-minded intellect combined with deep humility and spiritual piety. He was intensely self-analytical, frequently writing candid assessments of his own personal flaws and intellectual struggles. Known for his persistent work ethic, he spent years performing tedious hand calculations to prove planetary orbits.

Kepler was  described by contemporaries as amiable and affectionate in private, generous in recognizing the achievements of others, and largely free of envy despite the professional rivalries he faced. He was also solitary and prone to melancholy, with a strongly speculative, almost mystical bent of mind that coexisted with rigorous scientific precision — a combination that made his character, in the words of one early biographer, "especially difficult to estimate." (7)

SPEAKING VOICE The evidence suggests Kepler was not a naturally compelling lecturer: his mathematics classes at Graz reportedly drew very few students, and by his second year none at all, forcing him to teach other subjects like Virgil and rhetoric to justify his salary. 

His written "voice," however, is extensively documented and offers the best window into how his mind worked: contemporaries and later historians describe his prose as notoriously fast-moving, digressive, and intellectually intense, frequently interrupting scientific argument with personal anecdotes, numerological asides, or excited exclamations about a new geometrical relationship. Kepler himself acknowledged this restless quality, explaining that he wrote as he did in order to "lighten the hard work and difficulty of a subject by mental relaxation," and his surviving letters reveal the same quick, associative, sometimes tangential energy that likely characterized his conversation. (8) (9)

SENSE OF HUMOUR Kepler's writings show flashes of dry wit, particularly in his astrological polemics, where he compared popular astrology to a "foolish daughter" dependent on her "wise mother," astronomy. He also wrote a satirical piece imagining a lunar-based perspective on Earth's astronomy, a device that reveals a playful, imaginative side balanced against his more severe scientific temperament. (10)

RELATIONSHIPS Kepler married twice. On April 27, 1597, he married his first wife, Barbara Mühleck (Müller), then 23, in a match arranged by friends and matchmakers; the marriage was reportedly unhappy owing to her difficult temperament, and she bore him five children, only two of whom survived, before her death in 1611.

Oil on copper portraits of Kepler and his wife, Barbara, c. 1600

In 1613, at age 41, Kepler married Susanna Reuttinger, then 24, having methodically evaluated eleven proposed candidates before choosing her; this second marriage, which produced seven children of whom three died young, was said to be considerably happier. (11) (3)

MONEY AND FAME Kepler's income was frequently precarious, and he supplemented his salary throughout his career by casting horoscopes and almanac forecasts for patrons and clients, a practice he privately regarded with some disdain even as he relied on it financially. 

His scientific reputation grew steadily through his roles as Imperial Mathematician to Emperor Rudolf II and adviser to General Wallenstein, though fame did not translate into lasting financial security, and he died while traveling to collect debts owed to him. (12)

FOOD AND DRINK Kepler was born and raised in the wine-growing region of Swabia, and his father kept a tavern in which the young Johannes reportedly worked as a pot-boy for a period after being withdrawn from school. (13)

His adult habits leaned toward austerity, driven as much by chronic financial hardship as personal taste: in a startlingly candid self-portrait written at age 25, comparing himself to a dog, Kepler noted that his own appetites were dog-like — "he liked gnawing on bones and dry crusts of bread, and was so greedy that whatever he saw he grabbed; yet like a dog he drinks little and is content with the simplest food." Chronic stomach ailments and fevers plagued him throughout his life, though no surviving source directly links these complaints to specific foods or to alcohol. (14)

MUSIC AND ARTS Kepler held a lifelong fascination with music, which played a central role in his astronomical theory of celestial harmony. In Harmonice Mundi, he mapped the movements and speed ratios of planets to musical intervals, arguing that planetary motion follows music's template; for example, the ratio between Jupiter's maximum speed and Mars's minimum speed corresponds to a minor third, while that between Earth and Venus corresponds to a minor sixth. (1)

LITERATURE Kepler is sometimes described as a father of science fiction for his novel Somnium (The Dream), which imagined a journey to the Moon and used the device to explain astronomical principles from a lunar viewpoint. It was published posthumously in 1634

He also wrote extensively in Latin across astronomy, optics, and mathematics, and left behind a substantial body of personal correspondence that offers rare insight into his inner life. (10)

Reproduction of 1634 title page of Somnium (The Dream)

NATURE Kepler held a deep awe for the natural world, viewing the entire cosmos as a reflection of an underlying divine and mathematical harmony. 

He integrated his religious convictions directly into his understanding of nature, regarding the Sun as a physical image of God's power and light. This philosophical view drove his exploration of geometry, the five regular polyhedra, and the close packing of spheres, which he applied to explain natural structures like the hexagonal shape of honeycomb cells. 

Alongside his broader planetary work, Kepler investigated a wide array of natural phenomena, studying atmospheric optics, the mechanics of human eyesight, and snow crystal structures, the latter leading to his pioneering 1611 treatise On the Six-Cornered Snowflake. (5) (15)

HOBBIES AND SPORTS Kepler's chronic ill health, including weak eyesight and general physical frailty, ruled out strenuous physical activity, and his intellectual energies were absorbed almost entirely by mathematics, astronomy, and astrology. He did, however, pursue practical inventive projects as something of a side interest, including efforts to design and patent an improved water pump. (5)

ASTRONOMY Johannes Kepler spent roughly forty years making a career out of trying to persuade the heavens to behave mathematically. It was not a straightforward undertaking. He worked through religious persecution, political upheaval, financial uncertainty and, for several years, the deeply irritating planet Mars. Yet from this rather unpromising mixture emerged the three laws of planetary motion that helped transform astronomy into modern science.

Kepler's professional career began in a slightly unexpected place: not an observatory, but a classroom. In April 1594, aged 23, he took a post teaching mathematics at the Protestant school in Graz, Austria. His original ambition had been to become a Lutheran minister, but life, as it occasionally does, had other plans.

While in Graz he produced his first important work, Mysterium Cosmographicum (1596). Kepler proposed that the distances between the planets could be explained by nesting the five Platonic solids — a wonderfully elaborate solution to a problem that, unfortunately for him, nature had not actually set. The idea was wrong, but it demonstrated his fierce commitment to the Copernican model of a Sun-centred universe.

Kepler's Platonic solid model of the Solar System, from Mysterium Cosmographicum (1596)

Graz was becoming increasingly uncomfortable for Protestants, however, and by 1600 the pressure had become impossible to ignore. Kepler refused to convert to Catholicism, and he and his family were effectively expelled. He therefore packed up and moved to Prague, which was already home to one of Europe's most remarkable astronomers.

That astronomer was Tycho Brahe, the Danish nobleman with an enormous collection of astronomical observations and, by all accounts, an enormous personality to go with it.

Kepler joined Brahe near Prague in 1600. His principal assignment was to investigate the orbit of Mars, which was proving particularly troublesome. Mars had the unfortunate habit of refusing to fit neatly into the circular planetary orbits that astronomers had been using for centuries. Kepler was given Brahe's observations and set about making sense of them.

He did not have long with his new employer. Brahe died unexpectedly in October 1601, leaving Kepler with something far more valuable than a comfortable working relationship: access to the painstaking observations that would eventually unlock the true shape of the planetary orbits.

After Brahe's death, Kepler succeeded him as Imperial Mathematician to Emperor Rudolf II, an extraordinarily prestigious appointment. It also gave him access to the observations he needed for his increasingly obsessive investigation of Mars.

The next twelve years were astonishingly productive. Kepler published Astronomiae Pars Optica (1604), an important study of optics; De Stella Nova (1606), concerning the new star, or supernova, he had observed in 1604; and Astronomia Nova (1609), which contained his first two laws of planetary motion.

The great breakthrough was that planets did not travel in perfect circles after all. Their orbits were ellipses, with the Sun occupying one focus. This sounds obvious now, but Kepler reached it only after years of calculations, revisions, false starts and what has become known as his "war with Mars." It was, in effect, a six-year argument with a planet, and Mars was winning for much of it.

Kepler also made important advances in optics. His Dioptrice (1611) helped explain the discoveries being made with telescopes and described the design of what became known as the Keplerian telescope.

The death of Rudolf II in 1612 brought another change. Kepler moved to Linz in Upper Austria, where he became district and provincial mathematician. He remained there until 1626, although political and religious turmoil made the place progressively less congenial.

Despite the troubles, Kepler continued working. In 1618 he discovered his third law of planetary motion: the square of a planet's orbital period is proportional to the cube of its average distance from the Sun. He published it in Harmonice Mundi in 1619.

He also produced the Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae (1618–1621), a systematic presentation of Copernican astronomy incorporating all three laws. The work became influential throughout Europe and helped establish the mathematical framework that would later prove so useful to Isaac Newton.

Eventually, however, religious and political upheaval associated with the Counter-Reformation made life in Linz untenable. In 1626 Kepler moved on again, this time to Ulm.

In Ulm, Kepler finally completed one of the projects that had occupied him for years. In 1627 he published the Rudolphine Tables, combining Tycho Brahe's extraordinarily precise observations with Kepler's new mathematical model of elliptical planetary orbits.

The result was the most accurate set of astronomical tables yet produced. It was also a fitting culmination of the unlikely partnership between Brahe, the great observer, and Kepler, the man who spent years trying to make sense of what Brahe had observed. One supplied the numbers; the other supplied the explanation. Science has rarely looked so much like a very long group project.

From 1628 Kepler also served as an adviser to General Albrecht von Wallenstein during the Thirty Years' War. Among other things, he provided astrological calculations for his patron, a reminder that even one of the founders of modern astronomy lived in a world where astronomy and astrology had not yet completely gone their separate ways.

Kepler's career ended, rather unglamorously in 1630, when he died in Regensburg while travelling to collect money that was owed to him. After a lifetime spent calculating the movements of planets, he was still having difficulty getting people on Earth to pay their bills.

Across four turbulent decades, Kepler had transformed astronomy. The old system had insisted that the heavens must move in perfect circles because circles were considered philosophically superior. Kepler eventually abandoned the philosophy in favour of what the observations were actually telling him. The planets travelled in ellipses, at changing speeds, according to mathematical relationships that could be measured and tested.

It was a decisive change in the way humanity understood the universe. Kepler supplied the laws; Newton would later explain the force behind them. Together, they helped turn astronomy from a subject in which the heavens were expected to conform to elegant assumptions into a science in which the heavens were allowed, at last, to have the last word. 

SCIENCE AND MATHS Kepler made fundamental contributions to mathematics and optics. He developed early methods of integration (infinitesimal calculations) to compute the volumes of wine barrels (Nova Stereometria Doliorum), which contributed to the later development of calculus. 

In optics, he correctly explained how light enters the human eye, how the retina projects inverted images, and how lenses correct near-sightedness and far-sightedness. 

PHILOSOPHY & THEOLOGY Brought up in the Protestant faith, Kepler had originally intended to become a minister before circumstances led him toward mathematics and astronomy instead. He believed his scientific discoveries revealed the divine order underlying the universe, famously stating, "Science is thinking God's thoughts after him," and he wrote of his convictions, "I believe only and alone in the service of Jesus Christ. In him is all refuge and solace." He remarked that his discoveries "may well wait a century for a reader, as God has waited 6,000 years for an observer," reflecting his confidence that his work served a divine as well as scientific purpose. (16) (17)

POLITICS Kepler operated largely within the patronage system of the Holy Roman Empire, serving as Imperial Mathematician under Emperor Rudolf II and his successors, and later as an adviser to General Wallenstein during the Thirty Years' War, providing astronomical calculations for Wallenstein's astrologers. As a Protestant working within a predominantly Catholic imperial court, he navigated considerable religious and political tension throughout his career, particularly as the confessional conflicts of the era intensified. 

SCANDAL In 1615, at the height of his scientific career, Kepler's mother Katharina was accused of witchcraft in Leonberg. Her defense initially relied on local lawyers, and the trial dragged on for years through delays and procedural complications until, in 1620, a concerned Kepler took a more active role, using his scholarly connections to gather evidence refuting the charges and writing letters and petitions on her behalf. Katharina was ultimately acquitted in 1621, narrowly avoiding execution at the stake, though she died just six months later, reportedly worn down by the ordeal. (17)

MILITARY RECORD Kepler was closely connected to military affairs through his role as an adviser to General Wallenstein from 1628 onward during the Thirty Years' War, supplying astrological and astronomical calculations relevant to Wallenstein's campaigns. (7)

HEALTH AND PHYSICAL FITNESS Kepler was sickly from birth as a premature child and nearly died of smallpox around age four, an illness that left him with crippled hands and permanently impaired, multiple vision. 

Throughout his life he suffered from headaches, sensitivity to cold, hemorrhoids that made calculation while seated difficult, and other chronic ailments, some of which historians have suggested may have included an element of hypochondria. He was also reportedly reluctant to bathe, going as long as eight years at one point before his first wife persuaded him to do so. (3) (18)

HOMES Kepler's life was markedly itinerant, shaped by religious upheaval and shifting patronage: he lived successively in Weil der Stadt, Leonberg, Tübingen, Graz, Prague, and later Linz, before his final years took him to Ulm, Sagan, and finally Regensburg. This constant relocation reflected the instability of Protestant scholars working within the religiously and politically fractured Holy Roman Empire during the era of the Thirty Years' War. 

House of Kepler and Barbara Müller in Gössendorf, near Graz (1597–1599) by Mrbeachguide

TRAVEL Kepler's travels were largely dictated by his career and patronage, taking him from Graz to Prague to work with Tycho Brahe in 1600, and later to Linz and other imperial territories as his position and the ongoing war required. His final journey, in 1630, took him to Regensburg to collect interest owed to him on Austrian bonds, a trip from which he never returned. (12)

In 1608, he introduced the concept of solar sails, writing: "Provide ships or sails adapted to the heavenly breezes, and there will be some who will brave even that void."

DEATH Johannes Kepler died in the southeastern German city of Regensburg on November 15, 1630, at the age of 58, apparently following a brief feverish illness. His burial site in Regensburg was lost after Swedish forces destroyed the churchyard during the ongoing Thirty Years' War, and only his own self-composed poetic epitaph survives: "I measured the skies, now the shadows I measure / Skybound was the mind, earthbound the body rests." (17)

APPEARANCES IN MEDIA  Kepler has been featured across modern media and scientific tributes:

Film: The biographical film Johannes Kepler (1974) produced in East Germany, and the 2002 film Eye of the Astronomer.

Literature: John Banville's 1981 historical novel Kepler, which dramatizes his life and scientific struggles.

Spaceflight: NASA named its planet-hunting space telescope the Kepler Space Telescope, launched in 2009 to search for exoplanets.

Astronomy: Features named in his honor include the lunar crater Kepler, the Martian crater Kepler, and the asteroid 1134 Kepler.

ACHIEVEMENTS Kepler's three laws of planetary motion remain foundational to modern astronomy and provided one of the essential building blocks for Isaac Newton's theory of universal gravitation. 

He also advanced the science of optics through his work on the Keplerian telescope and the study of light within the eye.

Kepler wrote what is considered an early work of science fiction in Somnium, 

He anticipated the modern concept of solar sails more than three centuries before their practical realization.

Edwin Hubble

 NAME Edwin Powell Hubble. He was often referred to by colleagues as "The Major" due to his military service and commanding presence.

WHAT FAMOUS FOR Edwin Hubble was a revolutionary American astronomer who fundamentally changed our understanding of the cosmos. He is best known for confirming that the universe extends far beyond the Milky Way by proving that "nebulae" like Andromeda were actually separate galaxies. He also formulated Hubble's Law, which provides the observational basis for the expanding universe and the Big Bang theory. The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) was named in his honor. (1) (2) (3)

BIRTH Born November 20, 1889, in Marshfield, Missouri, USA. 

FAMILY BACKGROUND Hubble was the third of eight children, not all of whom survived childhood. His father, John Powell Hubble, held a law degree but worked as an insurance executive — a man described as strict, demanding, and Baptist in his faith, though with a fondness for pipes and cigars. John Hubble would blow smoke rings for the entertainment of his children. 

His mother was Virginia Lee James. 

The family was financially prosperous and mobile, living in well-staffed homes in the suburbs of Chicago and later Louisville. 

Edwin's grandfather was an enthusiastic amateur astronomer who introduced the young Edwin to telescope-gazing when he was around seven years old. (4)

CHILDHOOD The family relocated from Marshfield to Wheaton, Illinois, before Hubble's first birthday. 

In his early years he was noted more for athletic prowess than intellectual achievement, though his grades were consistently high in almost every subject — the exception being spelling. 

As a boy he was captivated by the adventure novels of Jules Verne and H. Rider Haggard. 

His grandfather's telescope made such an impression on him that, aged around seven, he reportedly asked to stay up all night looking at the heavens rather than have an eighth birthday party. 

The young Hubble earned money during school holidays by delivering morning newspapers in Wheaton. (2)

EDUCATION Hubble graduated from Wheaton High School in 1906 with a scholarship to the University of Chicago, where he studied mathematics, astronomy, and philosophy, graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree in 1910. He also served as a student laboratory assistant to physicist Robert Millikan, a future Nobel Prize winner, and became a member of Kappa Sigma fraternity. 

He won a Rhodes Scholarship and spent three years at The Queen's College, Oxford, studying jurisprudence in deference to his dying father's wishes, also adding studies in literature and Spanish and earning a master's degree. 

After his father's death, he returned to the United States and taught Spanish and physics at New Albany High School, Indiana, also coaching the boys' basketball team, before returning to the University of Chicago to pursue graduate astronomy studies at Yerkes Observatory, earning his Ph.D. in 1917 (later revised to 1921 in some accounts) with a dissertation titled Photographic Investigations of Faint Nebulae. (2)

CAREER RECORD 1913 Following his return from Oxford, Hubble was admitted to the bar and practiced law in Louisville, Kentucky, for about a year to fulfill his promise to his dying father.

1914 He returned to the University of Chicago’s Yerkes Observatory to begin his doctoral work in astronomy.

1919 After serving in the military, Hubble was offered a position at the Mount Wilson Observatory in California by George Ellery Hale. He remained there for the rest of his career, using the 100-inch Hooker Telescope, then the largest in the world.

1924 On November 23, 1924, Hubble's discovery that the Andromeda nebula was actually an "island universe" (a separate galaxy) was first published in the New York Times.

1929 Hubble published his observations relating the distance of galaxies to their redshift, proving the universe is expanding.

1942 During World War II, Hubble left the observatory to serve as Head of Exterior Ballistics at the Aberdeen Proving Ground.

APPEARANCE Hubble was a tall, powerfully built man, standing six feet two inches in height. A dedicated athlete throughout his youth and early career, he possessed a physique to match — broad-shouldered and imposing. 

He was rarely without his pipe, and portraits from the Huntington Library show him habitually seated with a billiard pipe in hand. 

After Oxford, he adopted a cane and a long black English cape as part of his sartorial identity. (2) (4)

Studio Portrait of Edwin Powell Hubble 1931

FASHION Oxford transformed Hubble's dress sense entirely. He returned from England as what one observer called a confirmed Anglophile, adopting tweeds, plus-fours, knickers, and British pipes, complete with whimsical turns of phrase. He affected an English manner of dress for the remainder of his life, ordering tobacco from the London Pipe Shop of Los Angeles. His biographer Gale E. Christianson noted that he carried his style so far that his California acquaintances were sometimes bemused. (4)

CHARACTER Hubble has been described as intensely ambitious, driven, and focused, yet capable of great charm in social settings. His biographer noted that after returning from Oxford he was prone to exaggerating his earlier sporting achievements and embellishing his personal history. 

He could be stubborn in his scientific convictions — notably resisting the full interpretation of his own observational data as evidence for an expanding universe, insisting the evidence was not yet conclusive. 

Hubble was described as a dutiful son who set aside his true passion for astronomy to honour his father's dying wish that he study law. (2)

SPEAKING VOICE After three years at Oxford, Hubble returned to the United States speaking with what contemporaries described as an adopted British accent, which he retained for the rest of his life. He became so thoroughly anglicised in speech and manner that he was sometimes derided as an affectation. He was known for "whimsical turns of phrase that even Bertie Wooster might have hesitated to use," as his biographer put it. (2) 

SENSE OF HUMOUR  Hubble had a wry wit. He was fond of party tricks — one favourite being to strike a wooden match, flip it into the air, catch it on its wooden end, and light his pipe with it. His wife Grace noted his party trick delighted Hollywood guests. 

When Grace's height came up in conversation and he correctly estimated it at five feet four inches, his explanation was simply: "I was a high jumper, my dear." (4) (5)

RELATIONSHIPS In 1920, Hubble met Grace Burke at Mount Wilson Observatory. She was married at the time, but was widowed in 1921 when her first husband, Earl Leib, a geologist, died in a mine accident. After a discreet courtship, Edwin and Grace married on February 26, 1924, in a private ceremony at her family home. They had no children. 

Grace, a Stanford graduate described as a brilliant woman with a keen wit, devoted herself entirely to his career and wellbeing, acting as his first reader and editor and nursing him through his heart attack in 1949. Their marriage lasted until his death in 1953. (6) (7)

MONEY AND FAME Hubble's discoveries made him one of the most celebrated scientists of his era. By the late 1940s he was famous enough to appear on the front cover of Time magazine in 1948. 

His home in San Marino became a gathering place for film stars, intellectuals, and scientists; his circle included novelist Aldous Huxley and his wife Maria, as well as many of Hollywood's luminaries. 

He spent much of the latter part of his career lobbying — ultimately without success in his own lifetime — to have astronomy classified as a branch of physics, largely in hopes of becoming eligible for the Nobel Prize. (2) 

FOOD AND DRINK Hubble was a fan of traditional English tea and was often seen with his pipe. He enjoyed formal dinners, particularly during his time in California where he socialized with movie stars like Charlie Chaplin.

His San Marino home was described as "a constant party scene with hordes of visiting movie stars." (4)

MUSIC AND ARTS Hubble was part of a glamorous social world in California in the 1930s and 1940s, mixing regularly with artists, writers, and movie stars. 

LITERATURE As a boy, Hubble's favourite reading was the adventure novels of Jules Verne and H. Rider Haggard. In later life, book collecting became his principal hobby, with a particular focus on the history of science.

He became a trustee of the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, which holds his papers, photographs, notebooks, and observing logbooks. 

Hubble was the author of two notable works: The Realm of the Nebulae (1936) and The Observational Approach to Cosmology (1937). (2)

NATURE Hubble loved the outdoors. He and Grace regularly took vacations in the Sierra Nevada Mountains and went fishing and horseback riding in Colorado. Grace's journals from these trips were described as vivid and literary in their descriptions of the natural world. (6)

PETS Hubble's most celebrated companion was a black, part-Persian cat named Nicolas Copernicus. In 1946, Edwin and Grace brought home a kitten, and Hubble immediately announced: "Its name is Nicolas Copernicus." Nicolas is extensively referenced in Grace's diaries and features in numerous photographs held at the Huntington Library. 

The cat grew into what Grace described as a "part-Persian leviathan."  He was known to sprawl across Edwin's desk in his study — "over as many pages as he could cover," as Grace noted in her diary. When asked about this habit, Hubble's response was simply: "He is helping me." Nicolas was particularly fond of lying across astronomical charts. 

Image by Gemini

Hubble was devoted to the cat's comfort and independence. He habitually referred to his San Marino home as "Nicolas' estate." ( He installed a cat door at the San Marino home, declaring: "All cats should have one — it is necessary for their self-respect"). 

Pipe cleaners — scattered liberally around the house — were Nicolas's favourite toy. 

The cat slept at the foot of the master bed every night and repaid the household with gifts of lizards, live birds, dead mice, and dragonflies. (8) (9)

HOBBIES AND SPORTS Sport dominated Hubble's early life. At Wheaton High School he won seven first places and a third place in a single track and field meet in 1906, set a state record in the high jump, and played baseball, football, and basketball. 

At university he was also a heavyweight boxer. He led the University of Chicago's basketball team to their first Big Ten Conference title in 1907, and after Oxford briefly coached a high school basketball team. 

His lifelong hobby was book collecting, particularly works on the history of science. He was also a keen pipe smoker, a trait inherited from his father, and was rarely seen without a pipe. (2) 

DISCOVERIES Before Edwin Hubble came along, astronomers had what might politely be called a cosmological parochialism problem. They believed the entire universe consisted of our home galaxy, the Milky Way—a bit like assuming your village is the whole of civilisation because you’ve never taken the bus to the next town. Those faint smudges in the sky—“nebulae”—were thought to be nothing more than local wisps of gas and dust, decorative but ultimately unambitious.

Hubble, however, had access to the Hooker Telescope at Mount Wilson Observatory, which in the 1920s was the scientific equivalent of upgrading from opera glasses to something capable of spotting a flea blinking at twenty paces. Armed with this, he set about resolving what was known, with admirable understatement, as “The Great Debate.”

The Hooker Telescope by Andrew Dunn 

On the night of October 5, 1923, while examining the Andromeda Galaxy—then still clinging to its more modest title of “nebula”—Hubble noticed what he thought were three novae. This would have been mildly interesting. But on digging through old photographic plates, he realised one of these stars wasn’t exploding at all—it was pulsing. This made it a Cepheid variable, a class of star whose rhythmic brightening and dimming conveniently reveals how far away it is.

At this point, Hubble did something delightfully human. He crossed out his original “N” (for nova) and scribbled “VAR!” in red ink. One imagines a small, satisfied nod—history rarely records whether he allowed himself a cup of tea.

Using a method pioneered by Henrietta Swan Leavitt, he calculated that Andromeda was about 900,000 light-years away. This was awkward, because the Milky Way was nowhere near that large. In one stroke, the universe had gone from cosy to cavernous.

Hubble didn’t stop there. He found similar stars in other “nebulae,” including the Triangulum Galaxy, and concluded that the universe was populated by not one galaxy, but millions. It was rather like discovering that every faint light on the horizon is not a candle, but an entire city.

He then did what any orderly-minded astronomer might do when faced with a suddenly overcrowded universe: he tidied it up. The Hubble Sequence sorted galaxies into ellipticals, spirals, barred spirals, and irregulars—categories that sound reassuringly manageable given that each contains billions of stars.

But his most consequential discovery came in 1929. By combining his own distance measurements with the redshift data of Vesto Slipher and work with Milton Humason, Hubble found that galaxies are not merely sitting about looking decorative—they are rushing away from us, and the farther they are, the faster they go. This became Hubble's Law, a finding that transformed the universe from a static arrangement into something far more dynamic and, frankly, a bit excitable.

When Albert Einstein visited Mount Wilson in 1931, he conceded that the universe might indeed be expanding—an admission widely interpreted as one of the more elegant scientific about-turns in history.

It’s only fair to note that Georges Lemaître had reached a similar conclusion two years earlier, though with the misfortune of not being immediately noticed—proof that timing, in science as in comedy, is everything. The relationship is now properly called the Hubble–Lemaître Law.

Hubble’s own measurements, it turned out, were somewhat off—by as much as a factor of seven—thanks to the universe’s irritating habit of being more complicated than expected. But crucially, he got the pattern right. The universe really was expanding, and really was vastly larger than anyone had supposed.

In the end, Hubble did for the cosmos what Nicolaus Copernicus and Galileo Galilei had done before him: he removed us from the centre of things. Only this time, he didn’t just move us to the suburbs—he revealed that we were living in a universe so large that “suburbs” no longer seemed an entirely adequate concept.

SCIENCE AND MATHS  Hubble’s work provided the first evidence for the "Expanding Universe." He confirmed that the further away a galaxy is, the faster it is moving away from us (Hubble's Constant). He also created the "Hubble Sequence," a system for classifying galaxies.

PHILOSOPHY & THEOLOGY Hubble was raised as a Protestant Christian. His later writings suggest a growing uncertainty about religious belief. He was cautious about philosophical overreach in science, consistently refusing to endorse the "expanding universe" interpretation of his data without what he felt was sufficient proof — a scepticism that some colleagues found frustrating but which reflected a rigorous empirical temperament. (2)

POLITICS No strong political affiliations are recorded for Hubble. He served his country loyally in both World Wars — in the army in World War I and as a civilian ballistics researcher in World War II — suggesting a patriotism that transcended party lines. 

SCANDAL Hubble was accused by some historians and scientists of having downplayed or suppressed the priority of the Belgian priest Georges Lemaître, who had independently published what became known as Hubble's Law two years before Hubble. In 2011 the journal Nature reported concerns that key passages had been omitted from the 1931 English translation of Lemaître's 1927 paper. Further investigation by astronomer Mario Livio found a letter suggesting Lemaître himself had authorised the omissions, though debate continues. 

He was also known in later life for embellishing stories of his earlier sporting achievements and background, presenting himself as more thoroughly English than his Missouri roots warranted. (2)

MILITARY RECORD Hubble enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1917, assigned to the 86th Division, 2nd Battalion, 343rd Infantry Regiment. He rose to the rank of major and was found fit for overseas duty on July 9, 1918, though the 86th Division was broken up before seeing combat. He subsequently spent a year at the University of Cambridge continuing his astronomical research. 

Hubble's identity card in the American Expeditionary Forces

During World War II he served as a civilian at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, as Chief of the External Ballistics Branch of the Ballistic Research Laboratory. His development of the high-speed clock camera — enabling detailed study of bombs and projectiles in flight — significantly improved U.S. military effectiveness. 

He was awarded the Legion of Merit in 1946. 

HEALTH AND PHYSICAL FITNESS Hubble was in excellent physical condition throughout his early life, a dedicated multi-sport athlete who also took up heavyweight boxing at university. 

In July 1949, he suffered a serious heart attack while vacationing in Colorado. Grace nursed him back to health, but his working schedule was permanently reduced and long cold nights at the telescope came to an end. He died of cerebral thrombosis (a blood clot in the brain) aged 63.  (2)

HOMES Hubble was born in Marshfield, Missouri, and the family moved to Wheaton, Illinois before his first birthday. After his father moved the family to Shelbyville, Kentucky, in 1909, they eventually settled in Louisville's Highlands neighbourhood. 

From 1919 Hubble lived in the Pasadena/San Marino area of California, where his home at 1140 Woodstock Drive in San Marino — a National Historic Landmark — became a celebrated social gathering place for scientists and film stars. 

TRAVEL As a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, Hubble spent two summer vacations cycling around Europe, visiting Germany before World War I. He noted the militaristic character of the Germans and predicted a bloody war if fighting broke out between Germany and the Allied powers. 

He and Grace later travelled to England aboard the SS Statendam in 1936. He also made extended trips to the Sierra Nevada and Colorado for recreation. (6)

DEATH Hubble died of a cerebral thrombosis on September 28, 1953, in San Marino, California, aged 63. He had been walking home for lunch, as was his custom, when he collapsed; Grace picked him up. 

At his own request, no funeral was held, and Grace never revealed his burial site. 

When she died in 1980, she was interred at the same undisclosed location. His papers were donated by Grace to the Huntington Library in San Marino upon her death. (7)

APPEARANCES IN MEDIA Hubble appeared on the front cover of Time magazine in 1948. 

A play, Creation's Birthday, written by Cornell physicist Hasan Padamsee, tells his life story. 

A US postage stamp honouring Hubble was issued on March 6, 2008, as part of the "American Scientists" series, with the citation: "Often called a 'pioneer of the distant stars,' astronomer Edwin Hubble (1889–1953) played a pivotal role in deciphering the vast and complex nature of the universe." (2)

ACHIEVEMENTS Hubble proved that the universe is comprised of many galaxies beyond our own. 

He provided the observational evidence for the expansion of the universe. 

Hubble  was awarded the Franklin Medal (1939), the Legion of Merit (1946), and the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1940). 

The Hubble Space Telescope, launched April 24, 1990, is named in his honour. It is approximately the size of a large school bus (43.5 feet long) and uses only around 2,100 watts of power — comparable to a household clothes dryer. 

Additional namesakes include the crater Hubble on the Moon, the Edwin Hubble Highway (a stretch of Interstate 44 through his birthplace of Marshfield, Missouri), asteroid 2069 Hubble, and Hubble Middle School in Wheaton, Illinois. 

Sources: (1) Wikipedia – Edwin Hubble (2) Famous Scientists – Edwin Hubble (3) NASA/GSFC – Biography of Edwin Powell Hubble (4) Pipes Magazine – Edwin Powell Hubble (5) National Academy of Sciences – Edwin Hubble Biographical Memoir (6) San Marino Tribune – The Story of Grace Lillian Burke Hubble (7) Huntington Library – Edwin and Grace Hubble Wedding Day (8) The Huntington – Pets Collection (9 ) Discover Magazine – 5 Cats Who Owned Famous Scientists 

Robert Hooke

NAME Robert Hooke

WHAT FAMOUS FOR Robert Hooke was a scientist, philosopher, architect, and one of the most versatile minds of the Scientific Revolution. Often described as “England’s Leonardo”, he made foundational contributions to physics, biology, astronomy, microscopy, geology, architecture, and urban planning. He discovered the law of elasticity (Hooke’s Law), coined the biological term “cell”, pioneered the experimental method, contributed early ideas resembling evolutionary theory, and served as leading surveyor to the City of London after the Great Fire of 1666.

BIRTH Robert Hooke was born on July 18, 1635 in the village of Freshwater on the Isle of Wight, England. He was born into the household at All Saints' Church, Freshwater, where his father served as curate.

FAMILY BACKGROUND Hooke's father, John Hooke, was an Anglican clergyman who served as the curate of All Saints' Church in Freshwater and also ran a small school. His mother was Cecily Gyles (also spelled Cecelie). Robert was the youngest of four children, having two sisters (Anne and Katherine) and an older brother, John. He was seven years younger than his eldest sibling. The family had modest means, though John Hooke senior intended for Robert to enter the ministry. Robert's father held aspirations for his sons to follow ecclesiastical careers, as several of John Hooke's brothers had also entered the church.

CHILDHOOD Robert Hooke was a frail and sickly child, and his parents held little hope that he would survive his early years. He suffered from frequent and severe headaches throughout his childhood, which prevented him from attending school regularly and interrupted his intended program of study for the ministry. As a result, Hooke was largely left to educate himself at home, where he developed his own interests.

Despite his physical weakness, young Robert displayed remarkable talents. His father noticed he was "amazingly talented at intricate work". Hooke spent his time drawing detailed pictures and working on mechanical instruments. He disassembled and studied the workings of machines, using them as guides to create his own devices. Notably, he constructed wooden clocks and even built a working model of a warship complete with firing cannons. These early demonstrations of mechanical aptitude and artistic skill led his father to believe Robert would become either a clockmaker or an artist. (1)

EDUCATION When Robert's father died in 1648, the 13-year-old inherited £40 (a significant sum at the time). He initially traveled to London to become an apprentice to the celebrated portrait painter Sir Peter Lely. However, this arrangement proved short-lived; the smell of oil paints and colors disagreed with his constitution and aggravated his chronic headaches.

Hooke instead entered Westminster School under the headmaster Richard Busby. At Westminster, he excelled, demonstrating exceptional talent in classical languages (Greek and Latin), mathematics, and mechanics. Busby recognized Hooke's gifts and provided special tutelage and support.

In 1653, at age 18, Hooke secured a place at Christ Church College, Oxford University. He received free tuition and accommodation by serving as an organist and chorister, and earned a basic income as a servitor. Though he did not officially matriculate until 1658, he was awarded a Master of Arts degree in 1662. At Oxford, Hooke studied experimental science and became immersed in the vibrant intellectual community. He worked as a chemical assistant to the anatomist Dr. Thomas Willis and met pivotal figures including Christopher Wren, Robert Boyle, and other proto-scientists who would form the nucleus of the Royal Society. Hooke characterized his Oxford days as "the foundation of his lifelong passion for science", and the friendships he formed there, particularly with Wren, remained important throughout his career. (2)

CAREER RECORD Hooke's professional career was extraordinarily prolific and spanned multiple domains:

1655-1662: Assistant to Robert Boyle at Oxford

1662–1703: Curator of Experiments for the Royal Society. Hooke was required to demonstrate three or four major experiments every week.

1665-1703: Professor of Geometry at Gresham College with an annual salary of £50. 

1666-1703: After the Great Fire of London in 1666, Hooke was appointed Surveyor to the City of London alongside Christopher Wren.

APPEARANCE No authenticated portrait of Robert Hooke survives, making his physical appearance a matter of historical debate and reconstruction. However, two detailed written descriptions exist from contemporary friends, John Aubrey and Richard Waller.

Physical Build: Hooke was described as being "of midling stature" (medium height) and "something crooked". At approximately age 16, he developed a pronounced curvature of the spine, likely caused by Scheuermann's kyphosis, a condition in which the vertebrae grow unevenly. This spinal deformity caused him to become bent or "awry," restricting his mobility and causing severe, disabling pain throughout his life. He was described as "very crooked" and "despicable" in person due to this deformity. Waller noted Hooke remained "always very pale and lean". 

Facial Features: Contemporary descriptions provide specific details: Hooke had "full and popping" grey eyes that were "not quick". His forehead was described as "large". His nose was "thin, of a moderate height and length". The mouth was characterized as "meanly wide," with a "thin" upper lip. He had a "sharp" chin. 

Hair: Hooke possessed "a delicate head of hair, brown, and of an excellent moist curl". The descriptions emphasize the quality and curl of his natural brown hair. Significantly, Hooke's diary reveals that in August 1672, he purchased a wig and cut his hair short, subsequently wearing wigs regularly in the early and mid-1670s. 

A seal discovered on an Isle of Wight document from 1684/85 bears an image that matches many details from the written descriptions, including the curled hair and facial features, though its authenticity as Hooke's likeness remains debated. Newton's infamous comment that he had seen "further by standing on the shoulders of Giants" is believed by some historians to be a particularly cruel jab at Hooke's pronounced spinal curvature. (3)

Rita Greer's imagined portrait of Hooke

FASHION  Hooke dressed plainly and practically, favoring utility over elegance. He had little interest in fashion beyond comfort and function.

As previously noted, Hooke adopted the fashion of wearing wigs in the 1670s, purchasing his first wig in August 1672. This timing corresponds with when wig-wearing became fashionable among professional and middle-class men in Restoration England. The fact that Hooke could afford such accessories (wigs were expensive status symbols) reflects his improving financial circumstances through his surveying work.

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Given his position at Gresham College, where professors were required to maintain certain standards of decorum, and his interactions with Royal Society members (including aristocrats and wealthy merchants), Hooke would have needed to dress appropriately for his professional station. His increasing wealth from surveying work—earning approximately £500 annually by the 1670s—would have allowed him to maintain the appearance befitting a respected man of science and a Fellow of the Royal Society.

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CHARACTER Brilliant but combative, Hooke was intensely curious, deeply insecure, and fiercely protective of his ideas. He was prone to paranoia and resentment, especially when he felt his work was being appropriated by others.

Hooke frequently engaged in priority disputes over scientific discoveries. His conflicts with Newton over optics, gravitation, and microscope design suggest deep-seated insecurity about receiving proper credit for his work. Some historians attribute this to the precarious nature of his professional position and his need to defend his intellectual contributions.

Hooke possessed an extraordinary work ethic and was described as "always overworked". He fulfilled his demanding responsibilities at the Royal Society with "ingenuity and gusto," performing hundreds of experiments over decades and setting a high intellectual standard. His diary reveals a man engaged in "frantic circulation" through London, maintaining an "energetic rush" of professional and social activities. (4) (5)

SPEAKING VOICE Hooke regularly presented demonstrations and lectures to the Royal Society's members, delivered Cutlerian Lectures on practical sciences, and served as Professor of Geometry at Gresham College. These positions required substantial public speaking abilities. His successful book Micrographia demonstrates his capacity for clear communication and accessible prose commentary.

SENSE OF HUMOUR Limited direct evidence exists regarding Hooke's sense of humor. However, his reputation suffered from public satire. In 1676, Thomas Shadwell's successful play The Virtuoso satirized the Royal Society, and Hooke felt personally targeted by the mockery. The play's character "Sir Nicholas Gimcrack" was widely interpreted as lampooning Hooke and the Royal Society's experimental work, particularly their "weighing of air" experiments.

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RELATIONSHIPS Robert Hooke never married, as Fellows of Gresham College were required to remain celibate. His personal relationships, particularly with women, remain among the most controversial aspects of his life.

Grace Hooke (Niece): The most significant and troubling relationship in Hooke's life was with his niece, Grace Hooke, daughter of his brother John. Grace came to live with her uncle Robert in London around 1670-1672, when she was approximately 10-12 years old. Ostensibly, the arrangement was for Robert to supervise her education. However, Hooke's diary reveals that by 1675-1676, when Grace was approximately 16 years old, he began a sexual relationship with her. His diary contains numerous coded entries (using the Pisces astrological symbol) documenting their intimate encounters.

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Diary entries such as "slept with Grace" appear regularly from June 1676 onward. In December 1676, Hooke wrote "Grace out. I resolvd to rid my self of her," suggesting internal conflict about the relationship. Biographer Stephen Inwood considers Grace to have been "the love of his life," and Hooke was reportedly devastated when she died in 1687 at age 27. Her death marked a turning point; Hooke's health declined significantly thereafter. This relationship constituted incest under contemporary law and would have been considered a felony even in the 17th century. ​

Female Servants: Hooke had sexual relationships with several female servants and housekeepers, including Nell Young, Mary Robinson, and others. His diary meticulously recorded these encounters using the Pisces symbol. Nell Young was the servant with whom he maintained the longest relationship and friendship; they remained friends even after she married and left his household.

Professional Relationships: Hooke maintained important professional friendships, particularly with Christopher Wren, with whom he collaborated for decades on architectural projects. He was close to Robert Boyle and worked with him for seven years. He became friends with the traveler Robert Knox, who brought him gifts and curiosities from his voyages, including cannabis seeds.

The Newton Rivalry: Hooke's most famous relationship was his bitter rivalry with Isaac Newton. The conflict began in 1672 when Newton submitted his first paper to the Royal Society on the nature of light. Hooke's scathing criticism humiliated Newton. Tensions exploded when Newton published Principia in 1687, containing his Law of Universal Gravitation. Hooke claimed Newton had borrowed his ideas about inverse-square gravitational attraction without acknowledgment. Newton refused to give Hooke credit, and their correspondence became "increasingly acrimonious". After Hooke's death in 1703, Newton became President of the Royal Society and allegedly oversaw the destruction or disappearance of Hooke's portrait. The rivalry embodied two contrasting approaches to science: Hooke's collaborative, experimental method versus Newton's solitary, mathematical approach.

MONEY AND FAME Robert Hooke's financial situation improved dramatically over his lifetime. He began with modest means—inheriting £40 (some sources say £100) from his father in 1648. His early positions paid relatively little: the Royal Society provided an annual salary of £30 (often paid late), the Cutlerian Lectureship offered £50 annually (which he had difficulty collecting), and his Gresham College professorship paid £50.

However, Hooke's work as City Surveyor after the Great Fire of London transformed his finances. He received fees from citizens for certificates and reports, payment for rebuilding London churches, and income from privately commissioned architectural work. His annual income during peak years reached approximately £500, placing him among the wealthier middle classes.

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By his death in 1703, Hooke had accumulated remarkable wealth. An iron chest found in his room at Gresham College contained approximately £10,000 in cash (equivalent to close to £1 million in today's money). Some contemporary accounts estimated his total wealth at £12,000. This was an incredibly large sum for an employee of the Royal Society receiving infrequent and late partial payments of his annual £30 salary". Nearly all his fortune came from his surveying work rather than his scientific positions.

During his lifetime, Hooke achieved significant recognition. His 1665 book Micrographia became one of the first scientific bestsellers. Hooke was "a celebrity" in his era and became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1663.

However, his reputation suffered considerably, particularly due to his conflicts with Newton and others. In later centuries, Hooke's legacy was "often vilified by writers" and he was largely forgotten, overshadowed by contemporaries like Newton and Wren. His reputation has only been restored in recent decades, with scholars now recognizing him as one of the greatest experimentalists of the 17th century and calling him "England's Leonardo [da Vinci]". (6)

FOOD AND DRINK He ate simply and sparingly, often neglecting meals when absorbed in work. This moderation was part of his overall approach to managing his chronic health problems.

Hooke frequently discussed the effects of "Dulwich water," a mineral drink from Dulwich Wells in South London, noting it "heat me much but betterd my stomack next day," "wrought well," and "mightily refresht me". He regularly consumed coffee and tea, and used the language of "refreshment" to describe their effects. He drank various alcohols, noting that "clough brandy refresht the stomack yet it stopd the natural passage but pears opened it". (5)

Hooke frequently took various medicinal compounds and proprietary concoctions. He regularly used "Andrews cordiall," which he described as causing effects like "wrought quick, went shivering and hazy like an ague to bed, burned about 2 and sweat much after" and on another occasion "brought much slime out of the gutts and made me cheerfull". He experimented with "Dr Cox's medicine," "tincture of steel," flowers of sulphur, mercury, senna, and sal ammoniac.

Perhaps most remarkably, Hooke experimented with consuming vomit—both his own and that of others—as an emetic and purgative. He recorded purchasing "Dr. Thompsons vomit" and the vomit of "Mr Hewk," documenting their various physical and psychological effects. One entry notes: "took Dr. Thompsons vomit. It vomited twice. Purged 10 or 12 times… Made me sleep ill, and made my arms paralytick with a great noyse in my head". (5)

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Hooke was a habitué of London's coffeehouses, particularly Garraway's (which he visited 1,274 times according to diary records) and Jonathan's (545 visits). Between 1672-1683, he made a total of 2,637 individual visits to coffeehouses. These establishments structured his social and professional networks, serving as places to meet scientists, craftsmen, clients, and travelers.

MUSIC AND ARTS  Robert Hooke demonstrated significant artistic ability from childhood. After his father's death in 1648, the young Hooke briefly apprenticed to the celebrated portrait painter Sir Peter Lely in London, though the arrangement ended when paint fumes aggravated his headaches.

Hooke's artistic skills proved invaluable to his scientific work. The detailed engravings in Micrographia (1665) showcase his exceptional ability to render microscopic observations visually. His illustrations of insects, plant structures, and other specimens combined scientific accuracy with artistic composition. His drawing of a flea became one of the most famous images in early microscopy.

Hooke's drawing of a flea

At Oxford, Hooke secured his place at Christ Church partly by serving as an organist and a chorister, indicating musical training and ability. This role provided him with free tuition and accommodation.

Hooke conducted extensive research in acoustics and music theory. His work on sound included experiments on how sound traveled through different media. He investigated the physics of musical instruments and vibration. His understanding of sound and music theory was sufficiently sophisticated to constitute a "larger subject than might seem the case from studies of his career so far available". (7)

Hooke designed numerous buildings after the Great Fire of London, including Bethlem Hospital, Montague House, and the Royal College of Physicians. His collaboration with Christopher Wren on London's reconstruction and church designs blended scientific principles with aesthetic considerations. Contemporary accounts suggest Hooke played a major role in designing the Monument to the Great Fire and contributed significantly to St. Paul's Cathedral's dome design.

LITERATURE Hooke was an avid reader. A picturesque account in Micrographia begins: "Reading one day in Septemb.", suggesting he regularly engaged with books during his leisure time. His diary and correspondence reveal familiarity with contemporary scientific literature and travelers' accounts.

Hooke's most significant literary achievement was Micrographia (1665), one of the first scientific bestsellers and a masterpiece of 17th-century science literature. Samuel Pepys famously called it "the most ingenious booke that I ever read in my life". The work combined detailed scientific observations with accessible prose commentary and stunning illustrations.

Other publications included:

Cometa (1666), on the nature of comets

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Description of Helioscopes (1675), including discussion of his balance-spring mechanism

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De Potentia Restitutiva or Of Spring (1678), establishing Hooke's Law

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Lectures of Spring (1678), expanding his theories on elasticity

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His Cutlerian Lectures, delivered regularly on practical sciences and trades

Hooke's writing demonstrated clarity and accessibility. His prose made complex scientific observations understandable to educated lay readers, contributing to the book's popular success.

Title page of Micrographia

NATURE Robert Hooke possessed an intense fascination with the natural world, manifested across multiple disciplines:

Hooke's observations of nature at microscopic scale revolutionized biology. Using his improved compound microscope, he examined an extraordinarily diverse range of natural specimens: cork (where he discovered "cells"), insect eyes, plant seeds, snowflakes, feathers, flies, moss, and "animalcules". His Micrographia illustrations showed silk fibers, fine lawn cloth, ants, fleas, cellar spiders, moths, nettle and wild oat, seaweed, rosemary and sage.

Hooke described these observations as revealing "the Wisdom and Providence of the All-wise Creator" in nature's smallest creatures. His work emphasized that divine design was "not less shewn in these small despicable creatures, Flies and Moths...then in those" larger animals. (8)

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Hooke made pioneering contributions to paleontology and geology. He was among the first to correctly identify fossils as "petrified remains of once living creatures" rather than mysterious mineral formations. He called fossils "medals of Nature" and part of "Nature's Grammar," suggesting they should be collected and studied like texts. (9)

Hooke's geological observations led him to three remarkable conclusions: fossils were organic remains, there had been radical changes in sea level throughout Earth's history, and hilltops in England had once formed beds of tropical oceans (evidenced by giant sea shells). He rightly inferred that fossilized fish in mountainous areas meant they had once been underwater, leading him to conclude that Earth had been inhabited by many extinct species. His work laid the foundation for modern geology, and evidence suggests James Hutton incorporated much of Hooke's theory into his own geological framework.

Hooke approached nature with the conviction that scientific instruments were "extensions of the human senses" that could reveal nature's true complexity. He believed careful observation of the natural world would restore the perfection of human senses lost since the Fall of Adam. (5)

PETS Hooke extensively used animals in his scientific experiments, with mixed results regarding his attitudes toward animal welfare.

In 1664, Hooke conducted a famous and disturbing vivisection experiment on a dog to investigate breathing mechanisms. He strapped a stray dog to his table, cut off the animal's chest to observe the thoracic cavity, and kept the terrified creature alive by pumping air into its lungs with a bellows for over an hour. In his letter to Robert Boyle describing the experiment, Hooke revealed genuine remorse: "I shall hardly be induced to make any further trials of this kind, because of the torture of this creature". This demonstrates that unlike some contemporaries who took pleasure in vivisection, Hooke was "deeply moved by the suffering he had caused". (10)

Hooke observed mice in experiments on air in 1664, marking the first recorded use of mice in scientific research. He used various animals in experiments for the Royal Society, though he did not perform further full vivisections after the traumatic dog experiment.

HOBBIES AND SPORTS Hooke's primary leisure activities centered on coffeehouses, which functioned as his social and professional gathering spaces. His diary documents thousands of visits to these establishments, particularly Garraway's and Jonathan's in Exchange Alley. These were not merely places to drink coffee but served as venues for meeting friends, discussing science, conducting business, hearing gossip, and encountering travelers with news from abroad.

Hooke's diary mentions walking as a regular activity. In June 1677, he recorded: "Walkd to Islington with Grace till she was weary". He took walks in "the fields north of Murfields or along the Thames" with Grace. These walks served both as exercise and leisure time.

From childhood, Hooke delighted in working with mechanical instruments and devices. He continued this interest throughout his life, constantly inventing and improving scientific instruments. This hands-on mechanical work appears to have been both professional necessity and genuine pleasure.

There is no evidence that Hooke participated in sports or athletic activities. His chronic ill health, spinal deformity, and physical frailty likely precluded active sports participation.

SCIENCE AND MATHS Robert Hooke was the sort of person who, if left alone in a room with a spring, a bit of cork, and a vague question about the universe, would emerge a few hours later having reinvented three branches of science and built a new instrument to measure the fourth. In the unruly, competitive, and frequently bad-tempered world of 17th-century science, Hooke stands out as one of its most relentlessly inventive minds—a man who seemed constitutionally incapable of not figuring things out.

His most famous contribution, Hooke’s Law, arrived in 1678 and did something rare in science: it explained a complicated behavior in terms so simple that even the universe appeared to nod in agreement. Hooke showed that the amount a spring stretches is proportional to the force applied to it—no drama, no theatrics, just a tidy relationship between push and pull. This modest insight turned springs from temperamental curiosities into reliable components, quietly enabling everything from clocks and car suspensions to the humble click of a retractable pen. It was physics behaving itself for once.

But Hooke was never content to linger in one field. He had an irrepressible urge to peer closer, which led him to microscopy and, eventually, to immortality of a different sort. While examining cork in 1665, Hooke noticed it was riddled with tiny compartments, which reminded him of monks’ cells. He called them “cells,” and biology has been stuck with the word ever since. His book Micrographia—lavishly illustrated and astonishingly popular—revealed a hidden world of insect eyes, plant fibers, and crystalline snowflakes, convincing an astonished public that reality was far more crowded than previously suspected.

Robert Hooke's microscope

Hooke also spent a good deal of time looking up. In astronomy, he identified the rotation of Mars and Jupiter, described lunar craters in detail, and very likely glimpsed what we now call Jupiter’s Great Red Spot before anyone thought to name it. He built the first accurate astronomical clock, proposed using pendulums to measure gravity, and designed telescopes so refined they made the heavens seem newly furnished. In 1674, he even constructed a functioning Gregorian reflecting telescope—a device that sounds obscure but was, in its way, revolutionary.

Then there was gravity, the subject that would haunt Hooke’s legacy. Years before Isaac Newton did the sums, Hooke suggested that planets were attracted to the Sun and that this attraction weakened with distance—possibly according to an inverse-square law. Newton later provided the mathematics and the fame, while Hooke got a lifelong grievance and one of history’s most legendary scientific feuds. Their relationship deteriorated into a frosty silence so thorough that Hooke’s portrait may have vanished from the Royal Society out of sheer spite.

Hooke didn’t fare much better in optics, where he argued—correctly, as it turns out—that light behaved like a wave. Newton disagreed, loudly and at length. Modern physics has since resolved the matter by deciding that light is both a wave and a particle, which would have pleased neither man but vindicated both. Along the way, Hooke invented the iris diaphragm, refined telescopes and microscopes, and built a refractometer for measuring how light bends through liquids.

If an instrument could be improved, Hooke improved it. If one didn’t exist, he built it. His inventions ranged from the universal joint (still known as Hooke’s joint) to balance springs for watches, air pumps, surveying micrometers, depth-sounders, weather instruments, and machines for grinding lenses. Working with Robert Boyle, he engineered the vacuum pumps that made Boyle’s gas law possible, quietly performing the technical miracles while Boyle took the headlines.

Hooke also had ideas about heat, matter, and air that were centuries ahead of their time. He proposed that heat was a form of energy rather than a material substance and suggested that air pressure came from tiny particles in constant motion—ideas that modern physics would later adopt with enthusiasm.

Though not a pure mathematician, Hooke was mathematically formidable enough to become Professor of Geometry at Gresham College, where he lectured, experimented, and occasionally taught algebra to family members, presumably because he couldn’t help himself. More than anything, he believed in experimentation—actual, messy, hands-on testing—as the surest path to truth. This insistence helped establish experimental science as the standard rather than a novelty.

In the end, Robert Hooke’s greatest talent may have been his refusal to specialize. He ranged freely across disciplines, connecting ideas others kept neatly separated. It made him indispensable, exasperating, and often overlooked—but it also made him one of the most astonishingly productive minds of his age. If science were a city, Hooke didn’t just live there; he helped build the streets, the tools, and quite a few of the laws governing traffic.

PHILOSOPHY & THEOLOGY Hooke came from a highly religious Anglican family. His father, John Hooke, was an Anglican clergyman who intended Robert for the ministry. However, when persistent headaches interrupted his theological studies, this plan was abandoned. The Anglican Church was abolished between 1643 and 1660, which coincided with Hooke's time at Westminster School and Oxford, influencing his decision to pursue science rather than the clergy.

Hooke believed that scientific instruments served to restore human senses to the perfection Adam enjoyed before the Fall. This theological framework provided both motivation for scientific inquiry and moral legitimacy for his experimental work.

While Hooke's personal religious beliefs are difficult to determine with certainty, he "valued tolerance" and "valued Liberty of conscience". He maintained close relationships with very religious people, including Robert Boyle, John Wilkins (Bishop of Chester), and John Tillotson (Archbishop of Canterbury). Hooke's mentor John Wilkins was "pretty explicit about his Christian beliefs and the way in which the natural philosophy that he's putting forward including a mechanical philosophy is totally congruent with Christian metaphysics and faith". (11)

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However, scholars note "we cannot know" the full extent of Hooke's personal faith. Some suggest we "cannot say that he was an atheist under cover or at least we cannot know it's something we just cannot know". The evidence suggests Hooke was a practicing Christian who saw no conflict between his scientific work and religious belief, though the depth of his personal piety remains uncertain. (11)

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POLITICS Robert Hooke was born during a period of intense political upheaval in 17th-century England. King Charles I was beheaded in 1649 when Hooke was 14 years old, following a civil war between royalists and radical Protestants. Oliver Cromwell established himself as "Lord Protector" (dictator) in 1653, the year Hooke entered Oxford. The Restoration of the monarchy under Charles II in 1660 coincided with Hooke's early professional career and the founding of the Royal Society.

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Hooke appears to have deliberately avoided direct political involvement. His educational path was influenced by political instability—many leading scientists switched from London to Oxford during the 1640s-50s seeking more politically stable environments, which influenced Hooke's decision to study at Oxford.

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Hooke benefited from royal and aristocratic patronage. He dedicated Micrographia to the King and had direct access to Charles II, whom he consulted about his brother's estate in 1678. He submitted a watch with balance-spring mechanism to Charles II in 1675 to establish priority over Huygens. These relationships were professional rather than overtly political.

SCANDAL Robert Hooke's life involved several scandalous elements:

The most serious scandal in Hooke's personal life was his sexual relationship with his niece Grace Hooke. Beginning around 1675-1676 when Grace was approximately 16 years old (she had been in his care since age 10-12), this relationship constituted incest under contemporary law and would have been considered a felony even in 17th-century England. The relationship was apparently kept secret, revealed only through Hooke's coded diary entries. Modern scholars recognize this as grooming behavior. This scandal remained largely hidden for centuries until researchers decoded Hooke's diary.

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Hooke engaged in numerous acrimonious disputes over credit and priority for scientific discoveries. Hooke's most famous conflict began when he harshly criticized Newton's 1672 paper on light, leading to increasingly acrimonious correspondence. The dispute exploded in 1686-1687 when Hooke accused Newton of plagiarizing his ideas about inverse-square gravitational attraction for the Principia. Newton denied Hooke's claims and removed numerous references to Hooke from his manuscript. Newton's famous quote about "standing on the shoulders of Giants" is believed to be a cruel jab at Hooke's spinal deformity.

A bitter dispute erupted between Hooke and Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens over who invented the balance-spring watch. Both presented watches with springs in 1675, though their designs differed significantly. Hooke claimed he had conceived the idea before 1660, but this was "unsupported by any evidence," and he "had a reputation for frequently attempting to claim the inventions of others". While Hooke may have invented a straight spring regulator, Huygens created the first working spiral spring watch. (12)

MILITARY RECORD Robert Hooke never served in the military in any capacity. His lifetime spanned several conflicts including the English Civil War (1642-1651), the Anglo-Dutch Wars (1652-1674), and various other military engagements, but Hooke's chronic ill health and physical frailty would have precluded military service. His spinal deformity, which developed around age 16 and caused severe pain and restricted mobility, would have disqualified him from military duty even if he had been inclined toward such service.

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HEALTH AND PHYSICAL FITNESS Hooke was an extremely frail and sickly child. His parents held little hope" for his survival during his first years. He suffered from frequent and severe headaches throughout childhood, which prevented regular school attendance and interrupted his early education. His father eventually gave up plans for Robert to study for the ministry due to these persistent headaches.

At approximately age 16, Hooke "first grew awry" and developed a severe curvature of the spine. This was likely caused by Scheuermann's kyphosis, a condition in which vertebrae grow unevenly. The deformity caused him to become "very crooked", restricted his mobility, and caused "severe and disabling pain" throughout his life. His contemporaries described him as "despicable" in appearance due to this pronounced curvature.

Hooke experienced numerous ongoing health problems. His diary is filled with detailed records of his symptoms and the various remedies he tried. He suffered from frequent headaches, digestive problems, and various pains. 

In the late 1690s, Hooke's health began to deteriate. He suffered from symptoms consistent with cardiovascular disease and diabetes: swollen legs, chest pains, dizziness, and emaciation. He also suffered from scurvy. During his last year of life, "blindness and swelling of the legs rendered him helpless" and he became bedridden. The death of his niece Grace in 1687 marked a turning point after which "his health declined at a greater rate".

Hooke engaged in extensive self-medication throughout his life. His diary documents consumption of numerous remedies, purgatives, emetics, and medicinal compounds. He experimented with various substances to manage his symptoms, including proprietary medicines, mineral waters, herbal preparations, mercury, sulphur, and even cannabis. He meticulously recorded the effects of these substances on his body and mind.

Despite his limitations, he maintained an extraordinarily active intellectual and professional life, rushing between coffeehouses, laboratories, building sites, and meetings.

HOMES Freshwater, Isle of Wight (1635-1648): Robert Hooke was born and spent his first 13 years at the household connected to All Saints' Church in Freshwater, where his father served as curate. The family home was modest, befitting a clergyman's family. Young Robert was largely confined to home due to his frequent illnesses.

Oxford - Christ Church College (1653-1662): From age 18, Hooke resided at Christ Church College, Oxford. His accommodation was provided as part of his position as organist, chorister, and servitor. During this period, he also worked in Robert Boyle's laboratory.

Gresham College, London (1665-1703): In 1665, when Hooke was appointed Professor of Geometry at Gresham College, he received lodgings at the college that "remained his home from then on". Gresham College was located on Bishopsgate Street in the City of London. Hooke lived in apartments within the college for 38 years until his death.

During the Great Plague of London in 1665, Hooke left the city temporarily. He retired to Durdans, near Epsom, to continue experiments away from the plague.

Property Investments: While Hooke lived at Gresham College, he invested in property. Documents exist showing him involved in property transactions on the Isle of Wight, including a 1684/85 assignment of a mortgage between the Town of Newport and Robert Hooke. His brother John had taken out mortgages on Newport properties, which Robert eventually repaid.

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TRAVEL Unlike gentlemen of his era who typically undertook Grand Tours of Europe, Hooke seldom left London. Hooke maintained connections to his birthplace and did occasionally returneto the Isle of Wight to visit family. 

While Hooke himself rarely traveled, he maintained keen interest in travel narratives and accounts from distant lands. He published travel literature by others, including Robert Knox's An historical relation of the island Ceylon (1681). Knox, who became Hooke's close friend, presented him with "gifts and curiosities" from his voyages, including the seeds of cannabis from his travels to the East. Hooke regularly met travelers at coffeehouses, where he heard their accounts. (15)

DEATH Robert Hooke died on March 3, 1703, at his lodgings in Gresham College, London. He was 67 years old. 

In his final years, Hooke suffered from multiple conditions including symptoms consistent with cardiovascular disease and diabetes: swollen legs, chest pains, dizziness, emaciation, and blindness. He also suffered from scurvy. These conditions progressively incapacitated him until he was confined to bed for his final year.

Despite his regularly voiced intentions to leave a generous bequest to the Royal Society to provide it with permanent premises, Hooke died intestate (without a will). His money subsequently passed to his illiterate cousin Elizabeth Stephens.

Hooke was buried at St. Helen's Church, Bishopsgate, near Gresham College where he had lived. The burial took place shortly after his death.

Tragically, Hooke's final resting place was disturbed and his remains lost. In 1891, during restoration work on the nave floor at St. Helen's Church, workmen uncovered "a jumble of crushed coffins, corpses and old bones". As many as 1,000 bodies had lain under the nave. Only 10 were identified; Hooke was not among them. All unclaimed bones were packed into crates and reburied in a common grave at City of London Cemetery, Wanstead, approximately 10 kilometers away. Hooke's bones are somewhere in that mass grave, unidentified and unmarked. (16)

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Newton's treatment of Hooke after his death bordered on vindictive. When Newton became President of the Royal Society in 1703 (the same year Hooke died), he allegedly oversaw the destruction or disappearance of Hooke's portrait. Newton also removed references to Hooke from later editions of Principia. This posthumous erasure contributed to centuries of historical neglect. His reputation was only restored in the late 20th century, when scholars began recognizing him as one of the greatest experimental scientists of the 17th century and England's Leonardo da Vinci".

APPEARANCES IN MEDIA Robert Hooke has appeared in various media productions, though far less frequently than his rival Isaac Newton:

(1) Television Documentaries:

Robert Hooke: Victim of Genius (1999): A television movie documenting "the story of how a giant of science was erased from history by the jealous rival Isaac Newton".

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BBC The Story of Science: Featured Hooke's Micrographia in a segment.

The Age of Revolution presented by David Dimbleby: This BBC program featured Micrographia and attempted demonstrations of Hooke's microscope.

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Cosmos (modern series with Neil deGrasse Tyson): Covered the Hooke-Newton rivalry and discussed the roles of both scientists along with Edmund Halley.

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​2. Literature and Fiction:

The Bloodless Boy by Robert Lloyd: A novel featuring Robert Hooke as a main character. The story has Hooke (as the Royal Society's Curator of Experiments) and his apprentice Harry Hunt investigating the death of a blood-drained boy using their knowledge of "new philosophy" (17th-century science). The novel is set during the period when Grace Hooke was living with her uncle.

Neal Stephenson's The Baroque Cycle: Hooke appears as a character in Neal Stephenson’s series of novels.

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3. Satirical Appearances (Contemporary to Hooke):

Thomas Shadwell's 1676 play The Virtuoso featured a character, "Sir Nicholas Gimcrack," widely interpreted as satirizing Hooke and the Royal Society. 

4. Public Interest: Recent years have seen increased interest in rehabilitating Hooke's reputation. The 2003 tercentenary of his death prompted renewed scholarly and public attention. However, Hooke remains far less prominent in popular culture than contemporaries like Newton, despite his extraordinary contributions to science.

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ACHIEVEMENTS Discovered the cell.

Formulated Hooke's Law.

Invented the compound microscope and the Gregorian telescope.

Co-designed The Monument to the Great Fire of London.

Designed scientific instruments still foundational today 

Anticipated ideas in evolution, gravity, and optics 

Helped establish modern experimental science

Sources: (1) Famous Scientists (2) The curious life of Robert Hooke : the man who measured London by Lisa Jardine (3) Isle of Wight History Centre (4) Ebsco (5) Intoxicating Spaces (6) England's Leonardo: Robert Hooke and the Seventeenth-Century Scientific Revolution by Allan Chapman (7) Taylor & Francis Online (8) Microrhetorica: Ethos and Empiricism in Robert Hooke’s Micrographia by Peter Ramsay Thomas (9) Paleonerdish (10) Drlindseyfitzharris.com (11) Robert Hooke's Experimental Philosophy by Felicity Henderson (12) Monochrome (13) Roberthooke.org.uk (14) The Mineralogical Record (15) Scolar Cardiff  (16) London Remembers