The Curious Life of Robert Hooke

Description

"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."--BOOK JACKET.

First Sentence

"On Saturday, 10 April 1697, a little less than five years before his death, Robert Hooke sat down with 'a small Pocket-Diary', specially purchased for the purpose, to write his autobiography: I began this Day to write the History of my own Life, wherein I "

Subjects

Other Editions

• The Curious Life of Robert Hooke: The Man Who Measured LondonHarperCollins2004-02-03
• CURIOUS LIFE OF ROBERT HOOKE: THE MAN WHO MEASURED LONDON.HARPERCOLLINS2003-01-01
• The curious life of Robert HookeHarperCollins2003-01-01
• The Curious Life of Robert HookeHardcoverHarperCollins Publishers Ltd2003-09-15
• The Curious Life of Robert HookeHardcoverHarperCollins2004-02-03
• The Curious Life of Robert HookePaperbackHarperCollins Publishers Ltd2004-09-06