The Incredible, Invisible World of Robert Hooke
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THE MICROSCOPE • Vol. 63:1, pp 23–34 (2015) C R I T I C A L FOCUS Brian J. Ford The Incredible, Invisible World of Robert Hooke t is time to celebrate. handsome house in Hamp- I The first popular sci- As the science world celebrates the 350th shire) and was satirized on ence book in the world is anniversary of the book Micrographia, the stage. When a popular 350 years old this year — biography was recently and it was a volume de- its brilliant author remains an obscure published with his por- voted to the world of the figure forgotten by the world at large. trait on the cover, the pic- microscope, aptly titled ture turned out to be of Micrographia. Our modern someone else entirely. era is dominated by the indul- Hooke’s life is one of perplexity gent irrelevance of fairytale and confusion. physics that no one under- Mention the name of Hooke stands, so a hands-on, relevant to most people and they will subject like microscopy attracts immediately assume you’re little popular interest. Back in talking of Peter Pan’s evil adver- the intellectual dynamism of the sary (though that sea captain 17th century, microscopy was a was actually named James). major talking point. The book’s Robert Hooke is unfamiliar. In author was a multi-talented pio- science he is associated with neer named Robert Hooke. What Hooke’s Law. This is the elemen- a series of paradoxes he poses. tary observation that the load Hooke was born on the tiny Isle upon a coiled spring is propor- of Wight, yet became one of the tional to its extension. Hooke ex- greatest figures of early science. pressed that in Latin as ut tensio, In spite of it all, he was destined sic vis (“as the tension, the to be forgotten by the world at force”), but he was so paranoid large. Hooke was a drug addict about someone plagiarizing his who had an affair with his teen- idea that he originally wrote it age niece, wrote extensive per- in code, listing the letters alpha- sonal papers that were believed Robert Hooke’s achievements were many, but oddly betically as ceiiinosssttuv. Most lost forever (they recently turned no image of him survives. Rita Geer painted this sources describe this as an ana- up in the back of a cupboard in a conjectured portrait in 2007. gram, but it isn’t. Rearranging 23 the letters of a word to become an anagram has to were named. Within a year Hooke became an assis- result in a word that can be read and, whatever else tant to Dr. John Wilkins of Wadham College, Oxford, ceiiinosssttuv might be, a word it isn’t. Not only is joining a circle of young enthusiasts, including Chris- Hooke’s Law obvious, but it is also wrong — a spring topher Wren, the architect of St Paul’s Cathedral. The extends in proportion to the applied force only within two became close and enduring friends; in strict and undefined limits. A small coiled spring may Micrographia, Hooke wrote of Wilkins: “He is indeed a increase its length from 3 to 6 inches if you double the man born for the good of mankind … in the sweetness mass hanging on the end from two ounces to four, but of whose behavior, in the calmness of his mind, in the it won’t become a mile long if you hang a ton on the unbounded goodness of his heart.” Wilkins recom- end. Well, it might if you conduct the experiment over mended the young Hooke to Robert Boyle, remem- a deep mine shaft and with a uniquely ductile metal, bered for Boyle’s Law: P1V1 = P2V2 (pressure exerted by but this would not be because of Hooke’s Law. a gas is inversely proportional to its volume). Boyle Freshwater, where Hooke was born on July 18, was also the man who bequeathed to us the present- 1635, is a village on the Isle of Wight, an island nest- day definition of an element. ling offshore from England’s south coast. Those com- ing to Britain from America by sea always cruise along ROYAL SOCIETY LECTURES the length of the Isle of Wight before reaching Southampton. Hooke’s father John was the local cu- The Royal Society was established in London in rate at All Saints Church, where the baby Robert was 1660, and one of the Society’s luminaries, Sir Robert christened the day following his birth. The island at Moray, proposed that an official curator should be the time was a busy and productive place, exporting appointed to demonstrate experiments regularly for minerals to the mainland and grain to Europe. Young the membership. On Nov. 12, 1661, Hooke was in- Robert spent much time studying the tides and direc- stalled in that office at the age of 29. Three years later tion of movement of the sea. He recorded how observ- he was granted £50 per year, and on Jan. 11, 1665, ers on dry land could direct small fishing boats to the Hooke was appointed curator for life with an addi- places where shoals of fish might lie by looking at the tional annual payment of £30. It is impossible to make color of the ocean. Alum Bay lies nearby; we visited it direct currency comparisons, but in today’s terms, this regularly on vacation when I was a child, and I was meant that he earned as much as a physician, say, or fascinated by the multi-colored sand layers. The young an accountant, even if not as much money as a leading Hooke had also spent time there, watching as alum lawyer. was mined and sent off for use as a mordant in the Some of Hooke’s lectures involved practical dem- dying of textiles. He studied fossils as a boy and once onstrations, including experiments with pendulums disassembled a clock, then built a working version of different lengths, of capillary action of liquids in out of hardwood. fine tubes, and on the effects of gravity. His lectures Hooke’s father died in 1648, and young Robert was were sometimes poorly attended — one record cites soon in London at the prestigious Westminster School an audience of only three people — though Hooke also under the personal tutelage of the head teacher Dr. gave popular demonstrations. One was the vivisec- Richard Busby. Latin, Greek, Hebrew and the biblical tion of a dog in which he showed that the lungs could language Aramaic were high on the curriculum, and be artificially inflated with bellows, work that reso- Hooke became able to translate Greek and Latin with nates in today’s medical practice. He made important ease. He was also taught from William Oughtred’s Key inventions, including a device that could cut the fin- to Mathematics (1631), the book that introduced the x est toothed gear wheels for a pocket watch and in- sign for multiplication (or magnification, as we would struments to monitor the movement of heavenly bod- say in microscopy; it is “times” not “ex”). Busby and ies across the sky. Hooke remained lifelong friends; indeed some people In 1663, Hooke was formally solicited by the Royal thought they were actually related. Society to offer microscopical demonstrations for the In 1653, Hooke transferred from London to Ox- members each weekend. On April 8, 1663, he presented ford and enrolled at Christ Church college, where what I identify as a specimen of Funaria hygrometrica, Busby had formerly been a teaching fellow. Hooke ex- the wall-screw moss, and a week later he showed fine celled at instrument making and studied under Dr. sections of cork. On April 22, he demonstrated “leeches Thomas Willis, after whom the blood vessels at the in vinegar” and blue mold, a week later he turned his base of the brain which we call the Circle of Willis attention to crystals in flint and the eyes of a spider; 24 THE MICROSCOPE 63 (2015) CRITICAL FOCUS | BRIAN J. FORD on May 6 he demonstrated gnats of the genus Culex; later that month he exhibited the point of a needle, an ant, and the pores in petrified wood. Then, on July 6, 1663, Hooke was instructed to compile all the result- ing drawings into a handsome volume that could be presented to King Charles II. Hooke took to the microscope as a teenager today is drawn to a 3-D printer — not because it was novel, but because it was fashionable. Magnifying is a much older fascination than we imagine. Hooke has fre- quently been thought of as the person who invented the microscope, but this instrument was popular de- cades before. In 1629, when Hooke was only three, Constantijn Huygens in the Netherlands was shown the view through a microscope by Cornelius Drebbel and wrote: “Material objects that till now were clas- sified among atoms since they far elude all human eyesight, present themselves so clearly to the observer … that they cry out that they perceive marvelous ob- jects with their eyes. For in fact this concerns a new theater of nature, another world.” The earliest book devoted to microscopical images was Apiarium e Melissographia, published in 1625 by Federico Cesi and Francesco Stelluti. The work was originally going to be a chapter for a larger encyclope- dia, but only this section appeared in print. The com- pound eye of a bee and other microscopical studies mark this out as a landmark. Another book about mi- croscopic revelation was proposed to the Flemish art- ist Jacob de Gheyn II in 1628.