Robert Hooke
1635 – 1703 English scientist
The versatile experimenter who coined the biological cell.
- Religion
- Anglican, as standard; his interests were thoroughly empirical.
- Affiliations
- Curator of experiments and secretary of the Royal Society. No secret society.
Hooke published Micrographia, whose drawings of a flea and cork cells revealed a hidden microscopic world and gave us the word cell. He formulated the law of elasticity and worked on gravitation, optics, and architecture. His feud with Newton over priority was long and bitter.
Connections
- rival of Isaac Newton — They clashed over light and over credit for the inverse-square law.