The curious life of Robert Hooke : the man who measured London / Lisa Jardine.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Jardine, Lisa.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Hooke, Robert, 1635-1703.

Hooke, Robert.

Scientists--Great Britain--Biography.

Scientists.

Great Britain.

Scholars--Great Britain--Biography.

Scholars.

Science--Great Britain--History--17th century.

Science.

History.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

ix, 422 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 24 cm

Edition:

First American edition.

Other Title:

Man who measured London

Place of Publication:

New York : HarperCollins, [2004]

Summary:

The brilliant, largely forgotten maverick Robert Hooke was an engineer, surveyor, architect and inventor who was appointed London's Chief Surveyor after the Great Fire of 1666. Throughout the 1670s he worked tirelessly with his intimate friend Christopher Wren to rebuild London, personally designing many notable public and private buildings, including the Monument to the Fire. He was the first Curator of Experiments at the Royal Society, and the author and illustrator of Micrographia, a lavishly illustrated volume of fascinating engravings of natural phenomena as seen under the new microscope. He designed an early balance spring watch, was a virtuoso performer of public anatomical dissections of animals, and kept himself going with liberal doses of cannabis and "poppy water" (laudanum).

Hooke's personal diaries -- cryptically confessional as anything Pepys wrote -- record a life rich with melodrama. He came to London as a fatherless boy of thirteen to seek his fortune as a painter, rising by his wits to become an intellectual celebrity. He never married but formed a long-running illicit liaison with his niece. A dandy, boaster, workaholic, insomniac and inveterate socializer in London's most fashionable circles, Hooke had an irascible temper, and his passionate idealism proved fatal for his relationships with men of influence -- most notably Sir Isaac Newton, who, after one violent argument, wiped Hooke's name from the Royal Society records and destroyed his portrait. In this lively and absorbing biography, Lisa Jardine at last does Hooke and his achievements justice. Illuminating London's critical role in the emergence of modern science, she rediscovers and decodes a great original thinker of indefatigable curiosity and imagination, a major figure in the seventeenth-century intellectual and scientific revolution.

Contents:

Introduction: Winner Takes All 1

1 The Boy from the Isle of Wight 21

2 A Sincere Hand and a Faithful Eye 57

3 Take No Man's Word for It 86

4 Architect of London's Renewal 131

5 Skirmishes with Strangers 177

6 Never at Rest 214

7 Friends and Family, at Home and Abroad 247

8 Argument Beyond the Grave 288.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 325-414) and index.

ISBN:

006053897X

0060538988

OCLC:

53276386