Robert Hooke

Robert Hooke (1635–1703) was an English natural philosopher, one of the most inventive experimenters of the seventeenth century. Born on the Isle of Wight and educated at Oxford, where he assisted Robert Boyle with the air pump, he became curator of experiments to the Royal Society in 1662 and Gresham Professor of Geometry. His Micrographia of 1665 opened the microscopic world to readers; he stated the law of elasticity that bears his name, improved the balance-spring watch, proposed the wave theory of light and, as surveyor of London after the Great Fire, worked beside Christopher Wren on the rebuilding. His quarrels with Newton over priority embittered his last years.