ROBERT HOOKE: BIOGRAPHY, CELL THEORY AND CONTRIBUTIONS - SCIENCE - 2024

Robert Hooke was a British scientist also known as "the Renaissance man" in 17th century England. He obtained this name thanks to his extensive work in areas of science such as biology, physics, and astronomy. He graduated from Oxford and went on to work with the Royal Society of Sciences and the Gresham School.

He was the first scientist to discover the law of elasticity; in fact, the scientific theory is called Hooke's Law of Elasticity, after this scientist.

Robert hooke

He was quite a controversial figure, particularly towards the end of his life. He made an enemy of Isaac Newton, who was in charge of destroying the only portrait of Hooke that existed. The dispute is said to have arisen because Hooke wanted to take credit for influencing Newton in the writing of his most famous work, Principia mathematica.

Biography

Robert Hooke was born on July 18, 1635 in the town of Freshwater, located on the Isle of Wight, in England. His father, a local church curator, was John Hooke; and his mother's name was Cecily Gyles.

From a very young age, Hooke showed a fairly high level of intelligence; in fact, they come to consider him a child prodigy. However, he used to get sick easily.

During his growth his intelligence was complemented by his interest in painting and making mechanical toys, as well as by creating models.

When he was 13 his father passed away, so he was sent to study in London under the tutelage of Peter Lely, a successful painter of the time.

Education

His connection with painting was not long. Shortly after arriving in London he joined the Westminster School and at age 18 he enrolled in the Christ Church School at Oxford. There he worked as an assistant to one of the scientific professors in order to finance the cost of his education.

It was during his stay at Oxford that Hooke managed to make friends with several important personalities of the time, including Christopher Wren.

This was fundamental later in his life, as he gave Hooke the assignment that resulted in the elaboration of his cell theory.

Professional life

The professor he had attended during his time at Oxford School was Robert Boyle, a leading scientist of the time. This gave him the position of curator at the Royal Society of Sciences in London, of which he soon after became a member.

Many of the scientists of the time did not require an income, as they came from wealthy families; however, this was not the case for Hooke. The scientist accepted a job as professor of geometry at the Gresham School, also in London.

After the Great Fire of London in 1666, he worked alongside his friend and now architect Christopher Wren as a city surveyor. He assisted in the rebuilding of London by redesigning several of its buildings and structures.

During his professional life he never married. She always lived with her niece, Grece Hooke, who at some point in her life was also her lover.

Personal conflicts

As curator of ideas for the Royal Society, it is said that on many occasions Hooke took credit for ideas from others. Throughout his career he had countless disputes with the most prominent scientists of the time.

He argued mainly with Oldenburg, for filtering his ideas; and with Newton, because he said that the mathematical principles that the discoverer of the Law of Gravity wrote had been influenced by Hooke himself.

In many cases, his reputation was damaged by his personality and how confrontational he was. However, he was a prominent scientist. He had an unmatched experimental facility, as well as an ability to work hard that few scientists of the time had.

Cell theory

When Hooke was 26 years old, Christopher Wren delegated him the task of producing a series of important microscopic studies, which had originally been assigned to him by the King of England.

He had originally been asked to analyze only insects, but decided to go further and analyze the properties of various elements, including cork, urine, blood, and charcoal.

He used microscopes with great focus, with a design that he had created himself. This allowed him to analyze the properties of objects much more precisely.

He was analyzing the cork when he realized that there were very small openings that were contained in microscopic walls. He described them as "cells," a term that went down in the history of science and for which Hooke was deservedly credited.

All of his discoveries, including the cell theory he proposed, are included in his publication of Micrographia. In addition, Hooke was the first scientist to calculate the number of cells in a cubic inch, a number that exceeds 1.25 billion.

He is credited with discovering the fundamental pillars of life in his book, and although in life he was never able to appreciate the scope of his cell theory, he was able to correctly understand the large number of cells that make up every living object and entity.

Contributions

Robert Hooke's contributions to the world of science, mainly, have positioned him as one of the most important and representative English scientists in the history of man.

Robert Hooke was a man who worked and innovated in the fields of mechanics, gravitation, paleontology, microscopy, astronomy, and the dynamics of time. He studied various astronomical theories, comets, the rotational motion of Jupiter, the memory of human beings, and even light and gravity.

He is considered on a par with other contemporary scientists such as Isaac Newton, Christopher Wren and Edmond Halley; He has been considered a controversial character due to the controversies that have arisen for attributing ideas that were not always his.

He was a scientist who adhered to traditional methods of experimentation and observation. For this, his theories were tested by himself.

His most important publication, which continues to be praised to this day, was Micrographia. In this document he analyzed all the results that he obtained through his experiments with the microscope. He first used the term "cell" while documenting the structure of cork.

He was also the one who proposed the theory of elasticity, in his publication known as Spring Lectures. In his theory, which came to be known as Hooke's Law, he proposed that the force needed to extend or compress a spring is proportional to the distance to which it is intended to go.

Microscopy and Micrography

Robert Hooke is celebrated in the fields of science and biology for having been the first person to observe and describe a cell, as well as a host of other microscopic elements and organisms.

The result of this research was the work for which he was most admired: Micrography, or some physiological descriptions of tiny bodies made using magnifying glasses, published in 1665.

In this work he managed to expose to the scientific world a universe of the tiny, more populated and internally structured than they could imagine.

During this period of his work, Hooke worked with his own version of a microscope for the time.

He was known for making many of the instruments he used for his research.

Sound frequencies

Hooke, during his life, was also interested in the study of intangible but perceptible physical phenomena.

Sound was one of these, allowing Hooke to show that a tone is determined by the frequency of vibrations from the sound source; a direct relationship between a stimulus and the sensation produced.

Hooke's experiment consisted of hitting a cardboard with a toothed wheel at a constant speed.

By increasing or decreasing the speed, the wheel in contact with the cardboard would produce higher or lower sounds.

Law of elasticity of bodies

Also known as Hooke's Law, it was first published, enigmatically, in 1678.

Hooke had spent time working with different long and thin bodies, measuring the level at which they broke.

During an assignment, he was asked to observe the point of flexion of the object before it broke, prompting Hooke to set the elasticity levels under force.

Out of fear that his secrets would be divulged and attributed to others, Hooke posted his advances in a very zealous way, using anagrams to explain his theories.

Architecture and topography

The great fire that suffered the city of London in 1666 led Hooke to get involved in architectural and urban work to undertake the reconstruction of the English capital.

After the incident, he was in charge of carrying out the topographic registration of multiple urban plots and spaces.

He shared this stage of his life with the implementation of his engineering knowledge and, together with Christopher Wren, they carried out several projects that have positioned them as references in terms of civil engineering schemes of the time.

Mechanics and engineering

Hooke approached mechanical research and practice as a result of his work in formulating the law of elasticity of bodies.

Although there are few sources that directly link him with the manufacture of some element or technique in the field of engineering, he is recognized as being close to the study of node patterns in glass plates and the conception of the spring.

After the great fire of London, Hooke was commissioned to work on rebuilding the alignments and layouts of the old streets and buildings following their original plan.

Paleontology

Due to his microscopic investigations, Hooke was able to identify a series of fossils whose preservation benefited from their contact with water.

Through the study of these fossils, Hooke was able to reveal the importance of these to generate a better notion of the years of existence of the fossil element.

These tests allowed Hooke to fight against the scientific secrecy of the moment, which rejected extinction, ignoring the vestiges of species found around the world, and which turned out to be the clearest sign of extinction processes under natural causes.

Astronomy

In the field of astronomy, Hooke sought to focus primarily on measuring the distances between the Earth and the stars (other than the Sun).

Despite having acknowledged having the results by then, today it is estimated that Hooke's calculations could be imprecise.

During his years devoted to astronomy, Hooke managed to observe and illustrate space phenomena such as star clusters and lunar craters.

Hooke is claimed to have been among the first to observe Saturn's ring system, as well as to identify one of the first star systems of two or more nearby stars.

Instruments

As mentioned above, Hooke was known for making many of the instruments he used; not only that, but it was also capable of achieving a high level of fidelity and effectiveness in the results and measurements produced by its implements.

Hooke was able to create his own microscope, capable of magnifying the observed object up to 30 times.

He is also credited with the invention of the spring and the iris diaphragm, an element used to this day in photographic mechanisms.

References

1. Addis, B. (2013). The contributions of Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke to the birth of modern construction engineering. Eighth National Congress of Construction History (pp. 1-11). Madrid: Juan de Herrera Institute.
2. Bennett, J., Cooper, M., Hunter, M., & Jardine, L. (2003). London's Leonardo: the life and work of Robert Hooke. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
3. Bryson, B. (2008). A short history of almost everything. Barcelona: RBA Books.
4. Chapman, A. (2004). England's Leonardo: Robert Hooke and the Seventeenth-Century Scientific Revolution. CRC Press.
5. Lanfranconi, M. (nd). History of microscopy. National University of Mar del Plata.
6. Stolik, D. (2008). Contributions of physicists to the development of music. 100cias UNED, 83-90.
7. Robert Hooke and The Discovery of the Cell, The Science of Aging, (nd). Taken from science-of-aging.com
8. Microscope history: Robert Hooke (1635-1703), History of the Microscope Online, (nd). Taken from history-of-the-microscope.org
9. Robert Hooke Biography, (nd). Taken from biography.com
10. Robert Hooke - British Scientist, The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, March 22, 2018. Taken from Britannica.com
11. Robert Hooke, Wikipedia in English, March 8, 2018. Taken from wikipedia.org