London鈥檚 Leonardo: The Life and Work of Robert Hooke by Jim Bennett, Michael Cooper, Michael Hunter and Lisa Jardine, Oxford University Press, 拢 20, ISBN 0198525796
THREE hundred years ago Robert Hooke died at the age of 68. Not surprisingly, new books about him abound. London鈥檚 Leonardo convincingly shows that Hooke was good, but fails to elevate him to the heights of the title鈥檚 Italian polymath Leonardo da Vinci, a maestro if ever there was one.
Hooke was a competent second fiddle, notably as Robert Boyles鈥檚 laboratory assistant, Christopher Wren鈥檚 architectural and town planning partner and the Royal Society鈥檚 weekly provider of experimental and scientific entertainment. Even though the law of elasticity 鈥� that extension is proportional to applied force 鈥� is named after him, and even though he invented the wheel barometer, claimed to have invented the spring-balance watch, and said that he was the first to suggest that gravity varied as the inverse square of distance, I have not been convinced that Hooke is in the Leonardo league.
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Four academics tackle Hooke鈥檚 life. Jim Bennett is a scientific historian and museum director, Michael Cooper an emeritus professor of engineering surveying, Michael Hunter a history professor and expert on Boyle and Lisa Jardine a professor of Renaissance history and expert on Wren. They give us four insightful, beautifully illustrated and well referenced pen pictures of the career, instrumentation, scientific achievements and life style of Hooke.
Clearly, Hooke was one of the greatest experimental scientists of his time and a man who was convinced that many of the shortcomings of the human senses could be rectified by the use of sensitive and robust instruments. He was a superb mechanic and inventor who also had a great belief in the importance of good data and sound observations as opposed to mere mental musing and philosophical fancy. This empirical approach was coupled with a refreshingly optimistic outlook on the pace of scientific advancement. Not for Hooke was the satisfaction of only knowing and understanding as much as his father.
Unfortunately, his lip service to scientific collaboration was counterbalanced by an intellectual possessiveness and a fear of being plagiarised. He wanted priority. This brilliant, wide-ranging and fertile inventor had the annoying habit of always trying to cap the achievements of others by claiming to have discovered everything before they had. His falling out with Isaac Newton was a perfect example. Hooke clearly regarded the gravitational notions of a London experimental physicist as being much more important than the plodding mathematical confirmation of a Cambridge don.
London鈥檚 Leonardo provides us with an excellent portrait of the father of instrumentation, a great entertainer when it comes to physics demonstrations, a lecture room showman and a scientific wonder-monger. But far too many questions are left unanswered. What motivated this Isle of Wight curate鈥檚 son? Why did he die in squalor with the equivalent of a million pounds in silver and gold coins in a wooden chest at the bottom of his bed? Why was he apparently indifferent to being referred to by Thomas Molyneux as 鈥渢he most ill-natured, self-conceited man in the world鈥�? Why did this hypochondriac and chronic insomniac have such a belief in toxic pharmaceutical 鈥渞emedies鈥�? Was this supposedly gregarious and good-natured man transformed into a stooping, reclusive, secretive, controversial and suspicious person just by the inappropriate choice of medicine?
Three hundred years after his death Hooke is a lesson to us all. If, in the future, you want to be raised from centuries of near obscurity and misjudgement you must write up your work promptly and in detail. Hooke didn鈥檛, and we are still arguing as to where that got him.