who is robert hook?

Answer 1

Robert Hooke, FRS (July 18, 1635 - March 3, 1703) was an English polymath who played an important role in the scientific revolution, through both experimental and theoretical work. His father's name was John Hooke and his mother unknown.

Born in Freshwater on the Isle of Wight, Hooke received his early education at Westminster School. In 1653, Hooke won a place at Christ Church, Oxford. There he met the chemist (and physicist) Robert Boyle, and gained employment as his assistant. It is possible that Hooke formally stated Boyle's Law, as Boyle was not a mathematician. In 1660, he discovered Hooke's law of elasticity, which describes the linear variation of tension with extension in an elastic spring. In 1662, Hooke gained appointment as Curator of Experiments to the newly founded Royal Society, and took responsibility for experiments performed at its meetings. In 1665 he published a book entitled Micrographia, which contained a number of microscopic and telescopic observations, and some original biology. Indeed, Hooke coined the biological term cell -- so called because his observations of plant cells reminded him of monks' cells which were called "cellula". The hand-crafted, leather and gold-tooled microscope Hooke used to make these observations for "Micrographia," is on display at the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington, DC. Also in 1665 he gained appointment as Professor of Geometry at Gresham College.

Robert Hooke also achieved fame as Surveyor to the City of London and chief assistant of Christopher Wren, helping to rebuild London after the Great Fire in 1666. He worked on designing the Monument, Royal Greenwich Observatory and the infamous Bethlem Royal Hospital (which became known as 'Bedlam').

He died in London in 1703. Although he was wealthy from his work in the City, he never married.

It seems that no authenticated portrait of him survives. In 2003 the historian Lisa Jardine claimed a recently discovered portrait represents Robert Hooke. However, Prof. Jardine's hypothesis was soon disproved by Prof. William Jensen (University of Cincinnati) and independently by the German researcher Andreas Pechtl (Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz). Actually, the portrait represents Jan Baptist van Helmont. A seal used by Hooke displays an unusual profile portrait of a man's head, that some have argued portrays Hooke. Both these claims remain in dispute, however. Moreover, the engraved frontispiece to the 1728 edition of Chambers' Cyclopedia shows as an interesting detail the bust of Robert Hooke.

In addition to the book Micrographia and Hooke's Law, Hooke invented the anchor escapement and may also have invented the balance spring before Christiaan Huygens. Devices known as escapements regulate the rate of a watch or clock, and the anchor escapement represented a major step in the development of accurate watches. The balance spring also regulates the flow of energy from the mainspring of a timepiece. It coils and uncoils with a natural periodicity, allowing for fine adjustment of the period of ticks. Modern spring watches still use balance springs, and derivative designs of Hooke's anchor escapement remain in common use. In February 2006, a long-lost copy of Hooke's handwritten notes from several decades' Royal Society meetings was discovered in a cupboard in Hampshire, and the balance-spring controversy appears by evidence contained in those notes to be settled in favor of Hooke's claim.

Historians sometimes credit Hooke with inventing the compound microscope, a design consisting of multiple lenses (usually three - an eyepiece, a field lens and an objective). While he did give much advice on new microscope designs to the instrument-maker Christopher ****, this attribution appears incorrect, since Zacharias Janssen had already assembled compound microscopes in 1590. However, Hooke's microscopes achieved 30x magnification, which far outstripped the capabilities of any previous instruments. Hooke once called his compound microscopes "offensive to my eye" and "much strained and weakened the sight". Leeuwenhoek found his animalcules and Hooke was asked to confirm his findings.

Hooke's other significant achievements include the construction of the first Gregorian reflecting telescope, the law of elasticity, and the discovery of the first binary star. He also receives credit with inventing the first practical universal joint, sometimes called the Hooke joint, although the Italian mathematician Girolamo Cardano had proposed the idea about a century earlier and may or may not have built one.

Hooke also experimentally demonstrated the inverse-square law of gravity, but did not prove it mathematically.

Hooke has been described as London's Leonardo (Bennett 2003) because of the breadth of his interests and the volume of his output which included not only science but architecture, surveying, town planning and invention.

* First to refer to cells in living matter.
* First to study fossils and hypothesise that they were extinct species.
* First to report Jupiter's Red Spot and by observing it deduce that the planet rotated.
* First to report the rotation of Mars.
* Worked out the number of vibrations of each musical note.
* Observed Lunar craters.
* Published the first book on microscopy, Micrographia.
* First to explain the shape of crystal in terms of the packing of their component parts.
* One of the first to observe a binary star.
* Postulated a wave theory of light, rejected by Newton and not re-established until by Fresnel in about 1820.
* Advocated the medicinal use of Indian Hemp.
* Proposed the inverse square relationship for gravity.
* Proposed to Newton the idea that planetary motion was a combination of linear and circular motion. It is this that is far more important for Newton's work than the inverse square law.
* Devised Hooke's law of springs.
* His investigations into combustion that came close to discovering oxygen 100 years before Lavoisier.

* The first anemometer.
* The first recording weather station.
* A thermometer.
* The universal joint.
* The spirit level.
* The use of rhumb lines to navigate a great circle route.
* The compound microscope.
* The first Gregorian telescope.
* Developed the air pump for Boyle.
* The spring driven clock and spring balance wheel.
* The anchor escapement for clocks.
* The iris diaphragm used in cameras.
* Telescope crosshair sight.
* The sash window.

Answer 2

Robert Hook was the first one to describe and name the cell which is structural unit of living things.

Answer 3

Do you mean Robert Hooke? If so, he was a 17th century scientist and engineer who accomplished many things and would have been much more well-known if he hadn't been torpedoed by Sir Isaac Newton, who despised him.

Answer 4

Wasn't he an Australian cricketer?