Product Description

A biography of a brilliant, largely forgotten maverick -- a major figure in the seventeenth century cultural and scientific revolutions The brilliant, largely forgotten maverick Robert Hooke was an engineer, surveyor, architect and inventor who was appointed London's Chief Surveyor after the Great Fire of 1666. Throughout the 1670s he worked tirelessly with his intimate friend Christopher Wren to rebuild London, personally designing many notable public and private buildings, including the Monument to the fire. He was the first Curator of Experiments at the Royal Society, and author and illustrator of Micrographia, a lavishly illustrated volume of fascinating engravings of natural phenomena as seen under the new microscope. He designed an early balance-spring watch, was a virtuoso performer of public anatomical dissections of animals, and kept himself going with liberal doses of cannabis and poppy water (laudanum). Hooke's personal diaries -- as cryptically confessional as anything Pepys wrote -- record a life rich with melodrama. He came to London as a fatherless boy of thirteen to seek his fortune as a painter, rising by his wits to become an intellectual celebrity. He never married, but formed a long-running illicit liaison with his niece. A dandy, boaster, workaholic, insomniac and inveterate socializer in London's most fashionable circles, Hooke's irascible temper and passionate idealism proved fatal for his relationships with men of influence, most notably with Sir Isaac Newton, who, after one violent row, wiped Hooke's name from the Royal Society records and destroyed his portrait. In this lively and absorbing biography, Lisa Jardine at last does Hooke and his achievements justice. Illuminating London's critical role in the emergence of modern science, she rediscovers and decodes a great original thinker of indefatigable curiosity and imagination, a major figure in the seventeenth-century intellectual and scientific revolution.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #211870 in Books
• Published on: 2004-09-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 448 pages

Review
'Jardine...has made important archival discoveries...her prose sparkles.' Sunday Telegraph 'Jardine sets out to penetrate the obscurity and show us the man...a fascinating, impeccably researched account.' Jenny Uglow, The Guardian 'Lisa Jardine is a new star on England's literary and historical scene. She has a gift, which so few historians possess, of making the past seem relevant to our own times.' Paul Johnson

Telegraph
'[Lisa Jardine's] highly readable account reveals a proud, impatient, brilliant man.'

Sunday Times
'brilliant and engrossing'

Customer Reviews

A lively and beautifully written account
Robert Hooke was very much a Renaissance man: artist, scientist, instrument-maker, and architect, he is remembered today only for Hooke's law which still forms the foundation of structural mechanics. However, he was at the time the major driving force behind the Royal Society. As its curator of experiments it was Hooke that both put forward the ideas to be tested and devised and built the equipment. He pioneered work in microscopy, made contributions in anatomy, changed the way we make clocks and watches and first put forward the idea that gravity obeyed the inverse square law. All this he did in his spare time between surveying London after the Great Fire and acting as an architect both in his own right and as Christopher Wren's chief assistant and friend.

This book vividly paints a picture of the life of this fascinating character. So lucidly is it written that one barely notices that it is brimming with fresh insights. An outstanding piece of scholarship and a brilliant piece of prose, this book is a must-have for anyone with an interest in the story of one of history's most colourful characters.

Disappointed reader
Having admired for a long time some of the theorems of Robert Hooke, and also being amazed of his diversity, I looked forward to reading this book. But I was astonished how an exciting thinker could actually be put back in the cupboard he should have leaft a long time ago! The sometimes tedious descriptions of all correspondences and repetitions of some facts, and the lack of synthetizing the ideas and discoveries of this man, that maybe stand as the sole witnesses of his accomplishments, is somewhat strange. Also, the negligence of defining the time and the environment he lived in, and foremost the probably disadvantage of not being born noble, has not been elucidated far enough. Was he the sole man in the scientific life of the 17th century England not to be recognized for his scientific work? The definition of "the winner takes it all" is also hastily put together, and that is maybe one of the feelings you get from this book, that the writer has not unveiled the incredible stringency and skills, and maybe visions, of all these men deducing facts about the laws of nature from observations and with instruments that actually were far from perfect. That's sad..as we've been left with immense treasures from which it should be more easy to derive insights about these men and their time.

A great book about our most under-rated scientist
The word polymath was made for Robert Hooke. This man was prodigious and it is time he was given the accolades that he didn't receive during a lifetime overshadowed by the genius of Isaac Newton. Not only did he prepare weekly experiments for The Royal Society over a period of years but he also found time to make scientific discoveries (Hooke's Law of Elasticity), to rebuild most of the London areas devastated by the Great Fire and make the first serious microscopic observations. He was a superb engineer, architect, designer and artist who has left an indelible imprint on science. You may also like to try "The Man Who Knew Too Much" by Stephen Inwood.