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Robert Hooke (1635-1703 C.E.)



Robert Hooke was one of the world's most influential biologists, chemists, and physicists of all time. Despite all of his accomplishments, much of what he has done has been overshadowed by Isaac Newton, his primary intellectual rival for most of his life. Hooke made a variety of advances in science from the establishment of Hooke's law to the discovery of plant cells through microscopic observation.

**Early Life**
Robert Hooke born on July 18, 1635, in Freshwater, on the Isle of Wight off of the Southern coast of England. In 1653, at age 18, Robert began to attend Christ Church in Oxford where his study of science led to designing and conducting experiments. Shortly after his education at Oxford, in 1662, Hooke was elected to the position of Curator of Experiments for the Royal Society of London which he held for life. His responsibility as curator was to demonstrate new experiments at the meetings for the Royal Society held weekly. Also early in his life, Hooke became professor of geometry at Gresham College in London, another one of his many intellectual interests and accomplishments. Although Isaac Newton was Hooke's fierce rival in physics, they eventually became friends towards the end of their lives

**Hooke's Law**
One of Robert Hooke's most notable accomplishments is Hooke's law, a method of precisely measuring the force exerted on an object by a spring. This discovery was made in 1660 by Hooke through the process of rigorous experimentation. Hooke's law asserts that the force that is exerted by a spring is directly proportional to the length that the spring is extended from the state of rest. The extension of a spring is the difference between its length and the length of the spring during a state of rest in which no force is exerted by it. The constant of variation changes if a different spring is used, but there is always a directly proportional relationship between the force exerted and the length of extension. As one of the first quantitative descriptions of mechanical situations involving forces, Hooke's law has been an important influence on modern mechanical physics. Hooke's law not only applies to springs, but also other situations involving harmonic motion.

Investigations in Biology
==== At a time when microscopic biology was nonexistent, Robert Hooke was able to make great strides that now serve as the fundamental basis of cellular biology. By observing thin cork slices at a microscopic level, Hooke discovered plant cells. One of his initial observations of the experiment as recorded in his book, Micrographia: "[...] I could exceedingly plainly perceive it to be all perforated and porous, much like a Honey-comb, but that the pores of it were not regular [...] these pores, or cells, [...] were indeed the first microscopical pores I ever saw, and perhaps, that were ever seen[...]" In 1678, Antony van Leeuwenhoek claimed the discovery of bacteria and protozoa to the Royal Society of London. Shortly following that, the Royal Society asked Hooke to confirm Leeuwenhoek's discovery which he then did, thus validating Leeuwenhoek's claim. Robert Hooke was also the first person to examine fossils using a microscope, and by doing so, he was able to see how the process of petrification of wood occurred. He found that dead wood was turned into stone in a slow process where water rich in dissolved minerals deposited minerals in the wood. ====



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