Robert Hooke

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Robert Hooke (1635-1703) who worked for Robert Boyle and was curator of experiments at the Royal Society. The engraving of a flea, above, is taken from his Micrographia which caused a sensation when published in 1665. Sometimes remembered for his disputes with Newton, he studied the planets with telescopes and snowflakes with microscopes. He was an early proposer of a theory of evolution, discovered light diffraction with a wave theory to explain it and felt he was rarely given due credit for his discoveries.

→ Play on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• David Wootton 16 episodes
  Anniversary Professor of History at the University of York
• Patricia Fara 17 episodes
  President Elect of the British Society for the History of Science
• Rob Iliffe 2 episodes
  Professor of History of Science at Oxford University

Reading list

• London's Leonardo: The Life and Work of Robert Hooke
  Jim Bennett, Michael Cooper, Michael Hunter and Lisa Jardine (Oxford University Press, 2003)
• History of the Royal Society of London
  Thomas Birch (Gale ECCO, 2010) Google Books →
• England's Leonardo: Robert Hooke and the Seventeenth-Century Scientific Revolution
  Allan Chapman (CRC Press, 2004) Google Books →
• A More Beautiful City: Robert Hooke and the Rebuilding of London After the Great Fire
  Michael Cooper (Sutton Publishing Ltd, 2003) Google Books →
• Robert Hooke
  Margaret Espinasse (University of California Press, 1962) Google Books →
• Oxford and the History of Science
  Robert Gunther (Oxford University Press, 1934) Google Books →
• The Diary Of Robert Hooke
  Robert Hooke (eds. Henry W. Adams and Walter Robinson) Google Books →
• The Man Who Knew Too Much: The Strange & Inventive Life of Robert Hooke 1635-1703
  Stephen Inwood (Macmillan, 2002) Google Books →
• The Curious Life of Robert Hooke: The Man Who Measured London
  Lisa Jardine (HarperCollins, 2003) Google Books →
• The Invention of Science: A New History of the Scientific Revolution
  David Wootton (Allen Lane, 2015) Google Books →

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Programme ID: b070h6ww

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b070h6ww

Auto-category: 509 (History and philosophy of science)