Robert Hooke

Robert Hooke was born on 18 July 1635 in England, an impoverished young inquirer who became assistant to Robert Boyle, building the vacuum pumps for Boyle's gas experiments. In 1662 he was made the Royal Society's first Curator of Experiments, and from 1665 he held the chair of Professor of Geometry at Gresham College. That same year his book Micrographia appeared - the work in which he coined the term "cell" and spurred a generation to look closer. He had already identified the rotations of Mars and Jupiter in 1664; he would go on to infer a wave theory of light, hypothesise that gravity follows an inverse square law in planetary motion (a priority dispute that fed his rivalry with Isaac Newton), and propose that heat is energy and air a swarm of particles in motion. After the Great Fire of London in 1666, Hooke surveyed more than half the property lines and helped raise the city again, acquiring wealth and esteem as both architect and rebuilder. In geology he recognised fossils as organic remains - some from extinct species - embedded by ancient processes, challenging the Biblical account and prefiguring evolutionary thought. Vilified for centuries after his d