By Hooke or By Crook

Dear Folk,

Today, July 18, 1635, in Freshwater, Isle of Wight, England, was born the greatest experimental scientist of the seventeenth century. His interests spanned mathematics, physics, astronomy, chemistry, biology, geology, architecture, and naval technology. He collaborated or corresponded with scientists as diverse as Christian Huygens, Antony van Leeuwenhoek,, Christopher Wren, Robert Boyle, and Isaac Newton. Yet, with all that, we do not have a picture of him nor a very good idea of his life. His name was Robert Hooke.

Bob Hooke was educated at Westminster, and Christ Church, Oxford, and in 1665 became professor of geometry at Gresham College, a post which he occupied till his death. He is still known by the law which he discovered, that the tension exerted by a stretched string is (within certain limits) proportional to the extension, or, in other words, that the stress is proportional to the strain. How many of us can say "amen" to that? I thought so!

Among other accomplishments, he invented the universal joint, the iris diaphragm, and an early prototype of the respirator; invented the anchor escapement and the balance spring, which made more accurate clocks possible; served as Chief Surveyor and helped rebuild London after the Great Fire of 1666; worked out the correct theory of combustion; assisted Robert Boyle in working out the physics of gases; worked out the physics of elastic materials; invented or improved meteorological instruments such as the barometer, anemometer, and hygrometer.

I know, you are probably saying, "Okay, that is all well and good but what else did he do?" I shall tell you, O jaded ones. Hooke built himself a compound microscope, a real doozy with more than one lens. He put everything he could think of under the lens: butterfly wings, slices of cork, insects of all sorts, sponges, bird feathers. Not only did he look at them and draw them (this was before cameras), he thought about them. He published his book Micrographia in 1665 which included this comment on cork:

". . . I could exceedingly plainly perceive it to be all perforated and porous. . . these pores, or cells, . . . were indeed the first microscopical pores I ever saw, and perhaps, that were ever seen, for I had not met with any Writer or Person, that had made any mention of them before this."

Catch that word "cells"? He was using it as in jail or monk's dwelling. Yup! He named the biological cell. He was looking at what we would call plant cell walls. Pretty important discovery. He did not stop there. He turned his microscope on fossils: he was the first to do so. Until Hooke's time, folks believed that the earth made rocks to resemble living things but they were only rocks. Bob Hooke looked at them and drew a totally different conclusion. He noted close similarities between the structures of petrified wood and fossil shells on the one hand, and living wood and living mollusk shells on the other. He concluded that the shell-like fossils that he examined really were "the Shells of certain Shel-fishes, which, either by some Deluge, Inundation, earthquake, or some such other means, came to be thrown to that place." Hooke observed that many fossils represented extinct organisms, writing "There have been many other Species of Creatures in former Ages, of which we can find none at present. . . 'tis not unlikely also but that there may be divers new kinds now, which have not been from the beginning." This was 250 odd years before Charles Darwin.

Astronomy was also where Bob Hooke could make an impact. He was the first person to build a Gregorian reflecting telescope. He made important astronomical observations including the fact that Jupiter revolves on its axis and his drawings of Mars were later used to determine its period of rotation. In 1666 he proposed that gravity could be measured using a pendulum. He worked out the orbits of planets and thought that their motion was due to their positions. Further, he proposed that it was an effect which varied with the inverse square of the distance. He sent this conjecture to Isaac Newton. Hooke could not prove the theory in any demonstrable way, but Newton did and got the credit. Hooke tried to call him on it but Newton won. Newton then refused to give any credit to Hooke; he even spread nasty rumors about Bob's life and habits.

Bob Hooke died March 3, 1703 in London, England. The bit about no picture: some folks said he was lean, stooped and just ugly -- I think those folks were friends of Newton - and so did not want to sit for a picture. Personally, I think he was just too busy.

So let us tote up what Mr. Robert Hooke gave us: the compound microscope, watches with compensating springs, reflecting telescope, theory of combustion, laws of compression of gases, fossils being alive at one time, law of elasticity, rotation of Jupiter and Mars, gravity being an inverse square phenomenon, the universal joint (hard to have automobiles without one), iris diaphragm (need those in cameras), a face-sucker (excuse me, a respirator), and the biological unit, which he discovered and named, the cell.

What have we learned about this? There is a lot to do if you just don't watch television? Being bent and ugly might free up some time other folks spend on dating? The stuff we take for granted had to be discovered or invented sometime? Maybe we had best learn is from Sir Isaac Newton, plagiarizing is okay as long as you call it research.

As always, you may forward these to any nascent scientists out there. Just keep my name and sig attached. Sorry about the no killing or maiming today. I thought some scientific slander would more than compensate.

Notes:

Yesterday I said that Hagia Sophia is now a mosque. It isn't. It became Ayasofia (Turkish), a mosque, in 1453 but is now a museum of Byzantine art. "Hagia" is Greek for "Holy." Thanks, for the catch to Anne Allen, wonderful author and classicist.

Mark Somerville, a Scientist himself, notes that Hagia Sophia is still an engineering marvel with a dome which was built without wooden center posts. Great stone cutting!

Hey, know anybody whose birthday should be noted but isn't – maybe yourself or your sweety? Send me an email and I would be happy to include a quick birthday greeting in this column on the day of their birth. Might make a nice keepsake. Maybe not. *G*

Researching thoroughly,
J. Ellsworth Weaver

SCA - Sir Balthazar of Endor
AS - Polyphemus Theognis
TRV - Sebastian Yeats