Hooke, ROBERT

Hooke, ROBERT, an English natural philosopher, born at Freshwater, Isle of Wight, July 18, 1635, and educated under Busby at Westminster, and at Christ Church, Oxford. He enjoyed the patronage of the Hon. Robert Boyle, and helped him to construct his air-pump. In 1662 he was appointed curator of experiments to the Royal Society, and in 1677 became its secretary; in 1665 professor of Geometry in Gresham College, London; and after the great fire of 1666 he acted as surveyor during the works, and thus accumulated several thousand pounds, which he hid away in an old iron chest. He died at Gresham College, March 3, 1703. Hooke was a man of extraordinary inventive genius, and has justly been considered as the greatest of philosophical mechanics; the wonderful sagacity, nay, almost intuition, he showed in deducing correct general laws from meagre premises has never before or since been equalled. There was no important invention by any philosopher of that time which was not in part anticipated by Hooke. His theory of gravitation subsequently formed part of Newton's; he anticipated the invention of the steam-engine, and the discovery of the laws of the constrained motions of planets. Among his own completed discoveries are the law of the extension and compression of elastic bodies, 'ut tensio sic vis;' the simplest theory of the arch; the balance-spring of watches and the anchor-escapement clocks; the permanency of the temperature of boiling water. The quadrant, telescope, and microscope are also materially indebted to him. Crooked in his person, he was upright in character, although solitary and penurious in his habits. His controversies with Huygens, Hevelius, and others brought him but little credit.