Famous Scientists

  • Home
  • Top 100 Scientists
  • List of Scientists
  • Blog

Robert Hooke

Robert Hooke was a Renaissance Man – a jack of all trades, and a master of many.

He wrote one of the most significant scientific books ever written, Micrographia, and made contributions to human knowledge spanning Architecture, Astronomy, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Surveying & Map Making, and the design and construction of scientific instruments.

Robert Hooke Blue Mold

Robert Hooke placed a sample of blue mold under his microscope and discovered that the mold was actually what he called ‘Microscopical Mushrooms.’

Early Life and Education

Robert Hooke was born on the Isle of Wight, England on July 28, 1635. His parents were John Hooke, a clergyman, and Cecily Gyles. He was the youngest of their four children. For most his childhood, and indeed his whole life, Robert Hooke’s health was delicate. He spent much of his school time at home.

When Robert was still a young boy, his father noticed he was amazingly talented at intricate work. Watching him work on mechanical instruments and admiring the fine detailed pictures he drew, he became convinced that Robert would end up becoming a clockmaker or an artist.

In 1648, Robert Hooke’s father died, leaving him a legacy of 40 pounds – a significant amount of money. The 13-year-old boy traveled to London to be educated at Westminster School, where he learned the classical languages of Greek and Latin, and studied mathematics and mechanics.

In 1653, aged 18, he enrolled at the University of Oxford’s Christ Church College, where he studied experimental science and became a chorister.

Advertisements

Hooke Becomes a Scientist

In 1655, aged 20, Hooke edged closer to becoming a scientist.

His capabilites with mechanical instruments had reached expert level and he secured work in Oxford as an assistant to one of the founders of modern chemistry, Robert Boyle. Hooke worked with Boyle for seven years, during which time his employer discovered Boyle’s Law using equipment designed and built largely by Hooke.

A Big Job with the Royal Society

In 1660, Boyle helped found the Royal Society, to advance scientific understanding of the world. In 1662, he helped the 27-year-old Hooke become the Society’s Curator of Experiments. With its motto Nullus In Verba – Take Nobody’s Word For It, the Society focused on learning about the world by experiment rather than through philosophy. Hooke’s new job, with responsibility for the Society’s experiments, was a big one.

He moved from Oxford to London where he held the Curator’s position for forty years.

Robert Hooke’s Scientific Discoveries

The Measurement of Time

In about 1657, Hooke greatly improved the pendulum clock by inventing the anchor escapement. This was a cog which gave a small push to every swing a pendulum took, preventing it running down, while also moving the hands of the clock forward.

In about 1660, Hooke invented the balance spring, vital for accurate timekeeping in pocket watches, one of which he made for his own use. A pendulum cannot be used in a pocket watch, so another way of marking the passage of time is needed.

Hooke’s balance spring was attached to a balance wheel and produced a regular oscillation which allowed time to be kept accurately. Christiaan Huygens invented the balance spring independently of Hooke over a decade later.

Hooke’s Law

In 1660, Hooke discovered Hooke’s Law, which states that the tension force in a spring increases in direct proportion to the length it is stretched to.

Micrographia and Microscopy

In 1665, at age 30, Hooke published the first ever scientific bestseller: Micrographia.

The book was a showcase for Hooke’s particular talents – his understanding of nature and light, his highly developed skills in designing and constructing scientific instruments, and his skills as an artist.

Hooke built a compound microscope with a new, screw-operated focusing mechanism he had designed. Previously, people needed to move the specimen to get it in focus.

He further improved the microscope with lighting. He placed a water-lens beside the microscope to focus light from an oil-lamp on his specimens to illuminate them brightly.

Robert Hooke's Compound Microscope

Robert Hooke’s own illustration of his compound microscope, with labels added by this website.

 

Hooke used his microscope to observe the smallest, previously hidden details of the natural world. His book Micrographia revealed and described his discoveries.

Some people disputed his diagrams because they refused to believe what they showed. The world Hooke had discovered was too alien for them!

Fly Eyes

Robert Hooke’s drawing from Micrographia of a dronefly’s head, showing detailed eye-structure. Images like this were too worryingly alien for some people to believe genuine.

 
The Importance of Hooke’s Micrographia

Micrographia was one of the most important scientific books ever written, because it revealed a new world that people had never imagined could exist. Our knowledge of microbiology, quantum physics, and nanotechnology can all be traced back to Hooke’s Micrographia and the path some scientists were inspired to follow after seeing the world Hooke revealed.

Hooke’s Discovery of Microscopic Fungi

Hooke discovered the first known microorganisms, in the form of microscopic fungi, in 1665. This preceded Antonie van Leeuwenhoek’s discovery of single-celled life by nine years.

Hooke’s Discovery of Plant Cells

Hooke looked at the bark of a cork tree and observed its microscopic structure. In doing so, he discovered and named the cell – the building block of life. He thought the objects he had discovered looked like the individual rooms in a monastery, which were known as cells. Hooke did not discover the true biological function of cells.

Robert Hooke - Plant Cells

Plant cells, discovered, named and drawn by Robert Hooke. This illustration was first published in Hooke’s book Micrographia, in 1665.

 
Crystals of Frozen Urine

Hooke’s drawings of crystals taken from frozen urine

 
Robert Hooke Bee Sting

Robert Hooke’s illustration of a bee’s sting. Hooke found that bee stings have barbs at the end. Image 2 is a more detailed illustration of the barbed end of the sting.

“Before I went to bed, I sat up till 2 a-clock in my chamber, reading of Mr. Hooke’s Microscopical Observations, the most ingenious book that I ever read in my life.”

Samuel Pepys
Diarist and Member of Parliament
 

Micrographia and Paleontology

Hooke used his microscope to study the ancient cells in fossilized wood. He concluded that fossils had once been living creatures whose cells had become mineralized. He also concluded that some species that had once existed must have become extinct. Although this is now accepted by almost everyone his proposal was controversial when he made it.

The Force of Gravity

In a lecture in 1670, Hooke correctly said that gravity applied to all celestial bodies and that the force of gravity between bodies decreases with the distance between them. If the force were to be removed, the celestial bodies would move in straight lines.

Hooke the Architect

While working as a scientist, Hooke developed a sideline career as an architect. People liked his designs for buildings, and he was appointed to be Surveyor to the City of London. In fact, he made much more money as an architect than as a scientist, because he designed many of the buildings that replaced those destroyed by the Great Fire of London in 1666.

The End

In his later years, Hooke became increasingly grumpy, engaging in a number of feuds with other scientists, often about who said what first. Hooke’s most famous feud was with Isaac Newton. Hooke thought Newton failed to give hime enough credit for his ideas about gravity.

Artists almost certainly painted pictures of Hooke in his lifetime, but none survive. Historians think that, although nobody deliberately set out to destroy paintings of Hooke, nobody made any great effort to preserve them either. The result is that we have no likenesses of this great scientist.

Robert Hooke died aged 67, on March 3, 1703, in London. He had suffered ill-health for some years, but the precise cause of his death was not recorded. Thanks mainly to his work as an architect, he died a very wealthy man.

From Hooke’s Micrographia:

By the means of Telescopes, there is nothing so far distant but may be represented to our view; and by the help of Microscopes, there is nothing so small as to escape our inquiry; hence there is a new visible World discovered to the understanding.

Advertisements

Author of this page: The Doc
© All rights reserved.

Cite this Page

Please use the following MLA compliant citation:

"Robert Hooke." Famous Scientists. famousscientists.org. 15 Oct. 2014. Web.  
<www.famousscientists.org/robert-hooke/>.

Published by FamousScientists.org

More from FamousScientists.org:
  • isaac newton
    Isaac Newton
  • Antonie van Leeuwenhoek
    Antonie van Leeuwenhoek
  • robert-boyle
    Robert Boyle
  • francis bacon
    Francis Bacon

Comments

  1. bilbo says

    November 26, 2014 at 3:51 pm

    this is a really good website

  2. anoonymous says

    November 24, 2014 at 11:15 am

    This really helped me me for my homework and I didn’t even know who Robert Hooke was now I know every bit of info about him and it was really a excitement to learn about this…

Advertisements

Search Famous Scientists

Scientist of the Week

  • Linda Buck: Discovered how we smell things

Recent Scientists of the Week

  • Jan Ingenhousz: Discovered photosynthesis
  • Barry Marshall: Overturned the Medical Establishment
  • Linus Pauling: Maverick Giant of Chemistry
  • William Röntgen: The Discovery of X-rays
  • Howard Florey: Brought penicillin to the world
  • Henrietta Leavitt: The key to the size of the universe
  • Archimedes: A mind beyond his time
  • Stanley Milgram: The infamous Obedience Experiments
  • C. V. Raman: Color change allows harm-free health check of living cells
  • Rosalind Franklin: Shape-shifting DNA
  • Robert Boyle: A new science is born: chemistry
  • Carl Woese: Rewrote Earth’s history of life
  • Alfred Wegener: Shunned after he discovered that continents move
  • Henri Poincaré: Is the solar system stable?
  • Polly Matzinger: The dog whisperer who rewrote our immune system’s rules
  • Otto Guericke: In the 1600s found that space is a vacuum
  • Alister Hardy: Aquatic ape theory: our species evolved in water
  • Elizebeth Friedman: Became the world’s most famous codebreaker
  • Evangelista Torricelli: We live at the bottom of a tremendously heavy sea of air
  • Eudoxus: The first mathematical model of the universe
  • James Black: Revolutionized drug design with the Beta-blocker
  • Inge Lehmann: Discovered our planet’s solid inner core
  • Chen-Ning Yang: Shattered a fundamental belief of physicists
  • Robert Hooke: Unveiled the spectacular microscopic world
  • Barbara McClintock: A Nobel Prize after years of rejection
  • Pythagoras: The cult of numbers and the need for proof
  • J. J. Thomson: Discovered the electron
  • Johannes Kepler: Solved the mystery of the planets
  • Dmitri Mendeleev: Discovered 8 new chemical elements by thinking
  • Maurice Hilleman: Record breaking inventor of over 40 vaccines
  • Marie Curie: Won – uniquely – both the chemistry & physics Nobel Prizes
  • Jacques Cousteau: Marine pioneer, inventor, Oscar winner
  • Niels Bohr: Founded the bizarre science of quantum mechanics
  • Srinivasa Ramanujan: Untrained genius of mathematics
  • Milutin Milankovic: Proved Earth’s climate is regulated by its orbit
  • Antoine Lavoisier: The giant of chemistry who was executed
  • Emmy Noether: The greatest of female mathematicians, she unlocked a secret of the universe
  • Wilder Penfield: Pioneer of brain surgery; mapped the brain’s functions
  • Charles Nicolle: Eradicated typhus epidemics
  • Samuel Morse: The telegraph and Morse code
  • Jane Goodall: Major discoveries in chimpanzee behavior
  • John Philoponus: 6th century anticipation of Galileo and Newton
  • William Perkin: Youthful curiosity brought the color purple to all
  • Democritus: Atomic theory BC and a universe of diverse inhabited worlds
  • Susumu Tonegawa: Discovered how our bodies make millions of different antibodies
  • Cecilia Payne: Discovered that stars are almost entirely hydrogen and helium

Top 100 Scientists

  • Our Top 100 Scientists

Our Most Popular Scientists

  • Astronomers
  • Biologists & Health Scientists
  • Chemists
  • Geologists and Paleontologists
  • Mathematicians
  • Physicists
  • Scientists in Ancient Times

List of Scientists

  • Alphabetical List

Recent Posts

  • Perfect Numbers and our Tiny Universe
  • What Happens when the Universe chooses its own Units?
  • Hipparchus and the 2000 Year-Old Clue
  • Darwin Pleaded for Cheaper Origin of Species
  • You Will Die For Showing I’m Wrong!
  • Getting Through Hard Times – The Triumph of Stoic Philosophy
  • Johannes Kepler, God, and the Solar System
  • Charles Babbage and the Vengeance of Organ-Grinders
  • Howard Robertson – the Man who Proved Einstein Wrong
  • Susskind, Alice, and Wave-Particle Gullibility




Alphabetical List of Scientists

Louis Agassiz | Maria Gaetana Agnesi | Al-BattaniAbu Nasr Al-Farabi | Alhazen | Jim Al-Khalili | Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi | Mihailo Petrovic Alas | Angel Alcala | Salim Ali | Luis Alvarez | Andre Marie Ampère | Anaximander | Carl Anderson | Mary Anning | Virginia Apgar | Archimedes | Agnes Arber | Aristarchus | Aristotle | Svante Arrhenius | Oswald Avery | Amedeo Avogadro | Avicenna

Charles Babbage | Francis Bacon | Alexander Bain | John Logie Baird | Joseph Banks | Ramon Barba | John Bardeen | Charles Barkla | Ibn Battuta | William Bayliss | George Beadle | Arnold Orville Beckman | Henri Becquerel | Emil Adolf Behring | Alexander Graham Bell | Emile Berliner | Claude Bernard | Timothy John Berners-Lee | Daniel Bernoulli | Jacob Berzelius | Henry Bessemer | Hans Bethe | Homi Jehangir Bhabha | Alfred Binet | Clarence Birdseye | Kristian Birkeland | James Black | Elizabeth Blackwell | Alfred Blalock | Katharine Burr Blodgett | Franz Boas | David Bohm | Aage Bohr | Niels Bohr | Ludwig Boltzmann | Max Born | Carl Bosch | Robert Bosch | Jagadish Chandra Bose | Satyendra Nath Bose | Walther Wilhelm Georg Bothe | Robert Boyle | Lawrence Bragg | Tycho Brahe | Brahmagupta | Hennig Brand | Georg Brandt | Wernher Von Braun | J Harlen Bretz | Louis de Broglie | Alexander Brongniart | Robert Brown | Michael E. Brown | Lester R. Brown | Eduard Buchner | Linda Buck | William Buckland | Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon | Robert Bunsen | Luther Burbank | Jocelyn Bell Burnell | Macfarlane Burnet | Thomas Burnet

Benjamin Cabrera | Santiago Ramon y Cajal | Rachel Carson | George Washington Carver | Henry Cavendish | Anders Celsius | James Chadwick | Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar | Erwin Chargaff | Noam Chomsky | Steven Chu | Leland Clark | John Cockcroft | Arthur Compton | Nicolaus Copernicus | Gerty Theresa Cori | Charles-Augustin de Coulomb | Jacques Cousteau | Brian Cox | Francis Crick | James Croll | Nicholas Culpeper | Marie Curie | Pierre Curie | Georges Cuvier | Adalbert Czerny

Gottlieb Daimler | John Dalton | James Dwight Dana | Charles Darwin | Humphry Davy | Peter Debye | Max Delbruck | Jean Andre Deluc | Democritus | René Descartes | Rudolf Christian Karl Diesel | Diophantus | Paul Dirac | Prokop Divis | Theodosius Dobzhansky | Frank Drake | K. Eric Drexler

John Eccles | Arthur Eddington | Thomas Edison | Paul Ehrlich | Albert Einstein | Gertrude Elion | Empedocles | Eratosthenes | Euclid | Eudoxus | Leonhard Euler

Michael Faraday | Pierre de Fermat | Enrico Fermi | Richard Feynman | Fibonacci – Leonardo of Pisa | Emil Fischer | Ronald Fisher | Alexander Fleming | John Ambrose Fleming | Howard Florey | Henry Ford | Lee De Forest | Dian Fossey | Leon Foucault | Benjamin Franklin | Rosalind Franklin | Sigmund Freud | Elizebeth Smith Friedman

Galen | Galileo Galilei | Francis Galton | Luigi Galvani | George Gamow | Martin Gardner | Carl Friedrich Gauss | Murray Gell-Mann | Sophie Germain | Willard Gibbs | William Gilbert | Sheldon Lee Glashow | Robert Goddard | Maria Goeppert-Mayer | Thomas Gold | Jane Goodall | Stephen Jay Gould | Otto von Guericke

Fritz Haber | Ernst Haeckel | Otto Hahn | Albrecht von Haller | Edmund Halley | Alister Hardy | Thomas Harriot | William Harvey | Stephen Hawking | Otto Haxel | Werner Heisenberg | Hermann von Helmholtz | Jan Baptist von Helmont | Joseph Henry | Caroline Herschel | John Herschel | William Herschel | Gustav Ludwig Hertz | Heinrich Hertz | Karl F. Herzfeld | George de Hevesy | Antony Hewish | David Hilbert | Maurice Hilleman | Hipparchus | Hippocrates | Shintaro Hirase | Dorothy Hodgkin | Robert Hooke | Frederick Gowland Hopkins | William Hopkins | Grace Murray Hopper | Frank Hornby | Jack Horner | Bernardo Houssay | Fred Hoyle | Edwin Hubble | Alexander von Humboldt | Zora Neale Hurston | James Hutton | Christiaan Huygens | Hypatia

Ernesto Illy | Jan Ingenhousz | Ernst Ising | Keisuke Ito

Mae Carol Jemison | Edward Jenner | J. Hans D. Jensen | Irene Joliot-Curie | James Prescott Joule | Percy Lavon Julian

Michio Kaku | Heike Kamerlingh Onnes | Pyotr Kapitsa | Friedrich August Kekulé | Frances Kelsey | Pearl Kendrick | Johannes Kepler | Abdul Qadeer Khan | Omar Khayyam | Alfred Kinsey | Gustav Kirchoff | Martin Klaproth | Robert Koch | Emil Kraepelin | Thomas Kuhn | Stephanie Kwolek

Joseph-Louis Lagrange | Jean-Baptiste Lamarck | Hedy Lamarr | Edwin Herbert Land | Karl Landsteiner | Pierre-Simon Laplace | Max von Laue | Antoine Lavoisier | Ernest Lawrence | Henrietta Leavitt | Antonie van Leeuwenhoek | Inge Lehmann | Gottfried Leibniz | Georges Lemaître | Leonardo da Vinci | Niccolo Leoniceno | Aldo Leopold | Rita Levi-Montalcini | Claude Levi-Strauss | Willard Frank Libby | Justus von Liebig | Carolus Linnaeus | Joseph Lister | John Locke | Hendrik Antoon Lorentz | Konrad Lorenz | Ada Lovelace | Percival Lowell | Lucretius | Charles Lyell | Trofim Lysenko

Ernst Mach | Marcello Malpighi | Jane Marcet | Guglielmo Marconi | Lynn Margulis | Barry Marshall | Polly Matzinger | Matthew Maury | James Clerk Maxwell | Ernst Mayr | Barbara McClintock | Lise Meitner | Gregor Mendel | Dmitri Mendeleev | Franz Mesmer | Antonio Meucci | John Michell | Albert Abraham Michelson | Thomas Midgeley Jr. | Milutin Milankovic | Maria Mitchell | Mario Molina | Thomas Hunt Morgan | Samuel Morse | Henry Moseley

Ukichiro Nakaya | John Napier | Giulio Natta | John Needham | John von Neumann | Thomas Newcomen | Isaac Newton | Charles Nicolle | Florence Nightingale | Tim Noakes | Alfred Nobel | Emmy Noether | Christiane Nusslein-Volhard | Bill Nye

Hans Christian Oersted | Georg Ohm | J. Robert Oppenheimer | Wilhelm Ostwald | William Oughtred

Blaise Pascal | Louis Pasteur | Wolfgang Ernst Pauli | Linus Pauling | Randy Pausch | Ivan Pavlov | Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin | Wilder Penfield | Marguerite Perey | William Perkin | John Philoponus | Jean Piaget | Philippe Pinel | Max Planck | Pliny the Elder | Henri Poincaré | Karl Popper | Beatrix Potter | Joseph Priestley | Proclus | Claudius Ptolemy | Pythagoras

Adolphe Quetelet | Harriet Quimby | Thabit ibn Qurra

C. V. Raman | Srinivasa Ramanujan | William Ramsay | John Ray | Prafulla Chandra Ray | Francesco Redi | Sally Ride | Bernhard Riemann | Wilhelm Röntgen | Hermann Rorschach | Ronald Ross | Ibn Rushd | Ernest Rutherford

Carl Sagan | Abdus Salam | Jonas Salk | Frederick Sanger | Alberto Santos-Dumont | Walter Schottky | Erwin Schrödinger | Theodor Schwann | Glenn Seaborg | Hans Selye | Charles Sherrington | Gene Shoemaker | Ernst Werner von Siemens | George Gaylord Simpson | B. F. Skinner | William Smith | Frederick Soddy | Mary Somerville | Arnold Sommerfeld | Hermann Staudinger | Nicolas Steno | Nettie Stevens | William John Swainson | Leo Szilard

Niccolo Tartaglia | Edward Teller | Nikola Tesla | Thales of Miletus | Theon of Alexandria | Benjamin Thompson | J. J. Thomson | William Thomson | Henry David Thoreau | Kip S. Thorne | Clyde Tombaugh | Susumu Tonegawa | Evangelista Torricelli | Charles Townes | Youyou Tu | Alan Turing | Neil deGrasse Tyson

Harold Urey

Craig Venter | Vladimir Vernadsky | Andreas Vesalius | Rudolf Virchow | Artturi Virtanen | Alessandro Volta

Selman Waksman | George Wald | Alfred Russel Wallace | John Wallis | Ernest Walton | James Watson | James Watt | Alfred Wegener | John Archibald Wheeler | Maurice Wilkins | Thomas Willis | E. O. Wilson | Sven Wingqvist | Sergei Winogradsky | Carl Woese | Friedrich Wöhler | Wilbur and Orville Wright | Wilhelm Wundt

Chen-Ning Yang

Ahmed Zewail

Return to top of page

Famous Scientists - Privacy - Contact - About - Content & Imagery © 2025