who was Robert Hook andwhat was his life like?

Question

sourses are needed 2 and how did he come to discover the cell?

Answer 1

Relatively little is known about Robert Hooke's life. He was born on July 18, 1635, at Freshwater, on the Isle of Wight, the son of a churchman. He was apparently largely educated at home by his father, although he also served an apprenticeship to an artist. He was able to enter Westminster School at the age of thirteen, and from there went to Oxford, where some of the best scientists in England were working at the time. Hooke impressed them with his skills at designing experiments and building equipment, and soon became an assistant to the chemist Robert Boyle. In 1662 Hooke was named Curator of Experiments of the newly formed Royal Society of London -- meaning that he was responsible for demonstrating new experiments at the Society's weekly meetings. He later became Gresham Professor of Geometry at Gresham College, London, where he had a set of rooms and where he lived for the rest of his life. His health deteriorated over the last decade of his life, although one of his biographers wrote that "He was of an active, restless, indefatigable Genius even almost to the last." He died in London on March 3, 1703.

Perhaps his most famous microscopical observation was his study of thin slices of cork, depicted above right. In "Observation XVIII" of the Micrographia, he wrote:


. . . 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, for I had not met with any Writer or Person, that had made any mention of them before this. . .
Hooke had discovered plant cells -- more precisely, what Hooke saw were the cell walls in cork tissue. In fact, it was Hooke who coined the term "cells": the boxlike cells of cork reminded him of the cells of a monastery. Hooke also reported seeing similar structures in wood and in other plants. In 1678, after Leeuwenhoek had written to the Royal Society with a report of discovering "little animals" -- bacteria and protozoa -- Hooke was asked by the Society to confirm Leeuwenhoek's findings. He successfully did so, thus paving the way for the wide acceptance of Leeuwenhoek's discoveries. Hooke noted that Leeuwenhoek's simple microscopes gave clearer images than his compound microscope, but found simple microscopes difficult to use: he called them "offensive to my eye" and complained that they "much strained and weakened the sight."