Robert Hooke

Undoubtedly, Isaac Newton was the towering intellect of the beginnings of science in Europe in the 1600's. His countryman and fellow member of the Royal Society Robert Hooke was next. Hooke did important early work not only in microscopy, but also in what we now call astronomy, paleontology, and physics, especially gravitation and mechanics. In addition, his extraordinary illustrations show that he had the hand-eye coordination and sensibilities of an artist. On the right (click to enlarge) is an illustration from Micrographia. Hooke's mind seemed to work more like Leeuwenhoek's in that he was an experimenter and observer and less like Newton's, which was able to synthesize ideas into stunning and crucially important insights.

Hooke called Newton's ideas about gravity "the greatest discovery about nature since the world's creation. It was never so much as hinted by any man before." That was in September 1689, and he could have said the same about Leeuwenhoek's work. Perhaps the microbial world was not the greatest discovery, but it was not far behind, and it definitely had never been so much as even hinted at before.

Robert Hooke was the most important person in Leeuwenhoek's scientific career. They never met, but they corresponded. Hooke was three years younger than Leeuwenhoek and died twenty years earlier. While Leeuwenhoek was still a linen merchant and civil servant, Hooke was making important contributions to a number of burgeoning philosophical (what we know call scientific) lines of inquiry. Leeuwenhoek apprenticed with a linen wholesaler in Amsterdam; Hooke apprenticed with Thomas Willis and Robert Boyle.

Also like Leeuwenhoek, Hooke had a civic career, as a surveyor after the Great Fire of 1666 among other things. They enabled him to pursue tasks as the Royal Society's Curator of Experiments at the epicenter of science at the time. For example, it wasn't until he was able to replicate Leeuwenhoek's observations of microbes for the members of the Royal Society that they accepted Leeuwenhoek's discoveries as true. This peer review is one of the cornerstones of today's scientific method.

Leeuwenhoek's first letter extended several of Hooke's observations from Micrographia. When Philosophical Transactions was suspended after the death of its founder, owner, editor, and publisher Henry Oldenburg, Hooke published five of Leeuwenhoek's letters in his short-lived journal Philosophical Collections. Hooke pushed Leeuwenhoek's election to the Royal Society. A decade later, Hooke wrote an assessment of microscopy at the end of the 17th century, and praised Leeuwenhoek as its "only living votary … besides whom none make any other use of that instrument".

Beginning in 1679, Hooke translated at least eight of Leeuwenhoek’s letters. In Letter L-118 to L. of 26 March 1682 (dated 16 March 1682 O.S.), Hooke writes, “I have not exactly followed your letter word for word in the translation, but as near as possibly I could I have expressed the true sense of your expressions.”

On 11 December 1683 O.S., he wrote in his diary, “begun to learn Dutch with Mr. Blackburne”. On the 13th December: “learnt Low Dutch”.

On 25 January 1684 O.S. he wrote that he had received a Dutch book by Nicolaas Witsen, Architectura Navalis Et Regimen Nauticum, Aaloude en hedendaagsche scheeps-bouw en bestier (Naval architecture and nautical government or ancient and contemporary shipbuilding and management).

Later, on 21 February 1684 O.S., he wrote, “Bought of Pots, Little Britain (Little Britainstreet): High Dutch bible, 2 low Dutch testaments 1 sh. Stevens mechanicks; Dutch 4 d. Dutch grammar and Dutch Corderius 3 d.”, by which he meant a Dutch translation of Colloquia Scholastica (School colloquies) by Maturinus Corderius. Hooke’s diary, kept from 1672 to 1683, is found at The London Metropolitan Archives, CLC/495/MS01758.

Along with the lost cover letter, Letter L-316 of 25 March 1697, Collected Letters, vol. 12, L. sent a copy of his Continuatio Arcanorum Naturae (Continuation of nature’s secrets), which had 15 letters, only one of them to the Society. Hooke prepared extensive summaries of all of the letters that he then read at meetings during the summer of 1697. The Royal Society and especially Hooke wanted to keep current on L.’s research, even if it did not involve them. The summaries are to be found in London, Classified papers of the Royal Society, CLP/20/89.

Letter L-063 of 10 December 1677 begins the correspondence between Hooke and Leeuwenhoek, who had addressed letters only to Henry Oldenburg (and one letter to Robert Boyle) until Oldenburg’s death in September 1677. Birch’s The History of the Royal Society of London, vol. III, p. 347, notes that on 1 November 1677 O.S., “After the reading of these papers, Mr. Hooke was ordered to return the Society’s thanks to Mr. Leewenhoeck, and to endeavour to procure farther discoveries from him by holding correspondence with him.”

Leeuwenhoek’s Letter 37 [23] L-067 of 14 January 1678 to Hooke continues, “But I wonder that in your letter I find no mention made of my observations of the second of December, St. No. also addressed to Lord Brouncker, which makes me doubt whether the same came to your hands.” In Collected Letters, vol. 2, p. 301, L.’s Letter 36 L-061 of 2 or 3 December 1677 is noted as having been addressed to only Brouncker.

Their correspondence consists of 28 letters, 12 from Hooke to Leeuwenhoek between 1677 to 1698 and one from both Hooke and Nehemiah Grew to Leeuwenhoek and 15 from Leeuwenhoek to Hooke between 1678 and 1682. Two of them were published Philosophical Transactions, L-097 of 12 Januari 1680 and L-102 of 5 April 1680.

AvL – the 192 letters numbered by Leeuwenhoek, 165 of which he published himself

CL – Collected Letters

No portraits of Hooke survive.

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