The Curious Life of Robert Hooke: The Man Who Measured London

Rating:
Summary: Multi-tasking Character
Review: Hooke was indeed a curious character. Newton's phrase was that he was a "man of strange, unsociable temper." Hooke was, like many other early workers in the nascent sciences, jealous of others and argumentative about his contributions--modesty was not one of the virtues of such men in those days.

Hooke was the sort of man who over-reached and had too many balls in the air at once. While he was a talented mechanic and experimenter, he took on such unrelated jobs as rebuilding London after the great fire. He did enough for half a dozen great men, but never achieved the first rank of a Newton or a Watt, with one or two great discoveries to his credit.

Jardine's book is extremely thoroughly researched, detailed, with plenty of references and source notes. There are lots of illustrations and portraits, and the book has a good index, and it is well organized. I enjoyed the detective story that Jardine tells in which she appears to have identified the only extant portrait of Hooke. Pretty convincing to me, and a real feather in her cap.

Sadly, however, she does not describe his scientific contributions very well or in as much detail as I would have liked. Descriptions of his astronomical instruments and innovations are quite glossed over, impossible to understand. In particular, for example, Hooke's attempt at the measurement of stellar parallax with a new zenith-pointing telescope, are entirely omitted from this work. This story is entertainingly told in Hirshfeld's recent book "Parallax" and belongs here too as it reveals so much of his method of working and his weakness in the follow-through.

One astounding revelation Jardine makes is that Hooke arrived at the inverse square law of gravitation "on the basis of experiments carried out with Henry Hunt..." but does not describe the experiments at all. How in the world could she omit any elaboration of this claim? If the experiments were done, and did support an inverse square law, then Hooke would be rightfully granted credit for the discovery of the universal law of gravitation, which almost everyone grants to Newton because he later worked out the mathematics of elliptical orbits!

The book rather concentrates on his social affairs, and is filled with minutiae that while sometimes interesting, is a bit exhausting. Just how much of the diary of the self-treatments of a hypochondriac can one stand to read?

Rating:
Summary: Multi-tasking Character
Review: Hooke was indeed a curious character. Newton's phrase was that he was a "man of strange, unsociable temper." Hooke was, like many other early workers in the nascent sciences, jealous of others and argumentative about his contributions--modesty was not one of the virtues of such men in those days.

Hooke was the sort of man who over-reached and had too many balls in the air at once. While he was a talented mechanic and experimenter, he took on such unrelated jobs as rebuilding London after the great fire. He did enough for half a dozen great men, but never achieved the first rank of a Newton or a Watt, with one or two great discoveries to his credit.

Jardine's book is extremely thoroughly researched, detailed, with plenty of references and source notes. There are lots of illustrations and portraits, and the book has a good index, and it is well organized. I enjoyed the detective story that Jardine tells in which she appears to have identified the only extant portrait of Hooke. Pretty convincing to me, and a real feather in her cap.

Sadly, however, she does not describe his scientific contributions very well or in as much detail as I would have liked. Descriptions of his astronomical instruments and innovations are quite glossed over, impossible to understand. In particular, for example, Hooke's attempt at the measurement of stellar parallax with a new zenith-pointing telescope, are entirely omitted from this work. This story is entertainingly told in Hirshfeld's recent book "Parallax" and belongs here too as it reveals so much of his method of working and his weakness in the follow-through.

One astounding revelation Jardine makes is that Hooke arrived at the inverse square law of gravitation "on the basis of experiments carried out with Henry Hunt..." but does not describe the experiments at all. How in the world could she omit any elaboration of this claim? If the experiments were done, and did support an inverse square law, then Hooke would be rightfully granted credit for the discovery of the universal law of gravitation, which almost everyone grants to Newton because he later worked out the mathematics of elliptical orbits!

The book rather concentrates on his social affairs, and is filled with minutiae that while sometimes interesting, is a bit exhausting. Just how much of the diary of the self-treatments of a hypochondriac can one stand to read?

Rating:
Summary: An Introduction
Review: I think I would have liked this book much better if I had read it before Stephen Inwood's The Forgotten Genius which, like this book, deals with the life of Robert Hooke. The differences between the two books, however, are striking. This is not to say that one is necessarily better than the other but, rather, that each has its strengths and weaknesses.

The first thing of note in Ms. Jardine's book is that she has a case to make--that a portrait previously identified as botanist John Ray is, in fact, a portrait of Hooke. This may not seem important to the casual reader but it has been one of the commonalities of Hooke research that no image of him remains. (Whether through accident or the machinations of bitter scientists like Newton, no one knows.) In fact, it is her argument over the authenticity of this portrait (which has some merit) that seems her real incentive for writing this book. In some sense, the rest of the book is an afterthought.

This is not to say that the rest of the book is not worthwhile. It most certainly is. Ms. Jardine tells her story well. Ms. Jardine's book has one major advantage over Mr. Inwood's: it is much more readable. Her style is much lighter and engaging. She is telling the story for a general audience whereas Mr. Inwood's main audience seems to be scientists and historians. She vividly recreates his youth on the Isle of Wight and his flight to London. She is excellent with outlining Hooke's tendencies towards hypochondria and the many tonics he took to keep himself going at a hectic pace. I am also very impressed with her telling of Hooke's conflict with the Huygens family which often gets short shrift in Hooke's story due to the much better known conflict with Newton.

Still, overall, Inwood's book gives a much better sense of the man. There is a real depth missing in this book. Ms. Jardine talks of Hooke's conflict with Newton near the very start of the book and then hardly mentions it again, though this is probably the defining time of Hooke's life. Her ability to discuss Hooke's scientific discoveries seems rather limited and even her discussion of his architectural work seems rather superficial. She is also rather gentle with Hooke, the man, glossing over evidence of his many affairs with housekeepers and what almost certainly became an incestuous relationship with his niece as well as taking it easy on his notoriously bad temper, though she does acknowledge it.

At least Ms. Jardine recognizes Hooke's weaknesses as a scientist and doesn't try to convince us he is a disrespected genius. She sees that he often overcommitted himself--though often with good reason--and that he didn't have the innate abilities of Newton, Huygens and Wren. He was a workman--the best of workmen and he deserved respect for that--but no genius.

A five-star book would be a collaboration between Ms. Jardine and Mr. Inwood. Combining her writing skills with his research and scientific knowledge would do Hooke the best justice. As it is, I would suggest reading this book first for a good introduction and then Mr. Inwood's book for a deeper look at this great experimentalist, Robert Hooke.

Rating:
Summary: London life in the 17th century
Review: It's amazing how many documents referring to Hooke have survived from the 17th century. Jardine seems to have studied them with care and insight. This is an excellent biography. Read this with Claire Tomalin's life of Samuel Pepys (The Unequalled Self) and you'll learn more about English history of the 17th century (especially the 1660s) than you'll get from many history books.

Rating:
Summary: tedious
Review: Maybe I'm making a mistake but i'm also reading this authors book about Christopher Wren at the same time, written in the same style.. I'm finding the text a little broken up in both of these books with many quotes from letters, and some in the old style english,
Personally i would like to have seen a more chatty, as opposed to a historical document, type of book in both cases.
For me they just seem like they could be more human and interesting in both cases.

Rating:
Summary: ¿a man of strange unsociable temper¿
Review: Robert Hooke, when he is thought of at all, is generally remembered as the "vain, bad-tempered, quarrelsome adversary of Sir Isaac Newton", forever seeking acknowledgment that it was he, not Newton, who first published the inverse square law of gravitational attraction.

History has, of course, sided with Newton, leaving Hooke the reputation as "a man who lacked the mathematical genius to turn a good idea into a great reality." He has since all but disappeared beneath the shadows of his scientific peers, Newton, Christopher Wren, Robert Boyle, and others.

After three centuries, however, Hooke may finally be receiving his due. He first reappeared to the public as a major secondary character in author Neal Stephenson's recent mammoth and ongoing series of historical novels, The Baroque Cycle.

Now, on the heels of James Gleick's well-received biography of Newton, comes The Curious Life of Robert Hooke, Lisa Jardine's attempt to reveal the truth behind the legend.

Subtitled The Man who Measured London, Jardine successfully rescues Hooke from the scrap-heap of obscurity, unveiling a restless maverick passionate for his experiments, a foremost member in the influential Royal Society, and "a founding figure in the European scientific revolution."

Jardine wisely glosses over the perils of mathematical and scientific jargon, instead focusing her biography on reviving the career of a man so largely forgotten, no recognized portraits of him can be found.

Despite the reputation foisted upon him, Hooke was a well-respected inventor and engineer in seventeenth century London. His enthusiasm for experimentation made him a staple of Royal Society meetings, as fellow scientists would meet and debate the merits of what he and others had displayed that day.

Hooke's true moment of greatness came during London's Great Fire of 1666. Twelve thousand homes were destroyed, and sixty-five thousand people left homeless and destitute.

Hooke, with his talent for taking on many roles at once, became instrumental in the reconstruction of the city, accepting the post of Chief Surveyor, and personally designing many notable buildings, including Bedlam Hospital and the Royal College of Physicians. It was an astonishing effort that would keep him in the public eye for most of his days.

Sadly, despite his triumphs, Hooke was a scientist "without a defining great work to give his life shape." A hypochondriac and insomniac, he took to self-medicating daily, leaving him "in a permanent state of extreme tension, on the edge, wary and wakeful, constantly under the influence of stimulants."

Finally, what damaged Hooke the most was his inability, in today's parlance, to network. As Newton once put it, he was "a man of strange unsociable temper," stoop-shouldered, embittered, and guilty of taking on too many tasks at once, leaving friends and patrons disappointed.

Jardine longs to proclaim Hooke "a genius who has been unjustly overlooked." In the end, she cannot. Hooke was guilty of trying to do too much, and finishing too little. Still, Jardine's biography stands as a fitting testament to his work, an ode to a man who, by all accounts, should stand as the patron saint of the multi-tasker.