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)
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| 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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| 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
Description of Helioscopes (1675), including discussion of his balance-spring mechanism
De Potentia Restitutiva or Of Spring (1678), establishing Hooke's Law
Lectures of Spring (1678), expanding his theories on elasticity
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.
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| 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)
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.
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| 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)
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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".
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.
Cosmos (modern series with Neil deGrasse Tyson): Covered the Hooke-Newton rivalry and discussed the roles of both scientists along with Edmund Halley.
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.
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.
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
