Felicity Henderson.
FELICITY HENDERSON
ROBERT HOOKE’S EXPERIMENTAL PHILOSOPHY (2024)
Robert Hooke (born 1635) was a prominent 17th century scientist. He was a fellow of the Royal Society, and was its first Curator of Experiments. He started his scientific career as an asssitant to Robert Boyle, building the pumps which Boyle used to study the characteristics of gases. Hooke was an extraordinarily versatile polymath. His areas of expertise covered astronomy, geology, meeoroligy and architecture. He was one of the first to study living things at microscopic scale, and coined the term cell. He identified the rotations of Mars and Jupiter, and developed a wave theory of light. He inferred the inverse square law of gravity, and foresaw the theory of biological evolution.
Simon Schaffer wrote of Felicity Henderson’s Hooke biography: "In this absorbing and wide-ranging study, Felicity Henderson charts the vast range of activities pursued by the virtuoso Robert Hooke, natural philosopher and architect, master of ingenious instruments and visionary projects. Hooke's remarkable enterprises are here used with great skill and wit to explore the effective methods of inquiry and innovation developed in early modernity, and to illuminate the vivid and active worlds of commerce, knowledge and controversy that flourished in Restoration London."
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Felicity Henderson is Senior Lecturer in Archives and Material Culture at the University of Exeter. She has written on the early years of the Royal Society, and is working on a new edition of Hooke’s diaries for Oxford University Press.
