Robert Hooke Empirical Law
I would like to pay homage to an unsung hero of Science Robert Hooke (1635-1703) who had the misfortune of making an enemy of Isaac Newton (1642-1726) which to say the least was not best thing to do. Posterity will recollect that Hooke is credited with the law that bears his name (Hooke’s law) that one learns as a young Physics student but quite frankly, this is not the most flattering law.
| Hooke’s Law Hooke’s Law explains the relationship between force, distance, and deformation of objects (i.e., compression or extension). The law notes that the required force to compress or extend an object is linearly proportional to the distance. Therefore, to move an object in an direction, by force x, then as the distance doubles, force may also be estimated as 2X. Therefore, we can use the distance as contact (k) We can state the law as Fs = kx. |
Contribution to Math and Science
Hooke is also credited for observing microorganisms, creating his famed micrographia (small drawings) in which he coined the term ”cell” for biological cells as what he observed, as he put it, reminded him of prison cells.
Hooke was educated at Oxford, and there is today the Robert Hooke Building (Cambridge having the Isaac Newton Institute); Hooke was a polymath and the 9th Gresham Professor. I have been fortunate to meet and work with many such professors, including Raymond Flood (Oxford line manager) and Robin Wilson (son of the late PM, Harold), who delivered talks at an LSE Summer school in Mathematics that I used to direct. I have also been fortunate to discuss Mathematics with another Gresham Professor, namely Christopher Zeeman(1925-2016), again at Oxford after he gave an impromptu talk on Euclid during a History of Mathematics symposium.
Returning to Hooke, he postulated the inverse square law of gravity, but alas he was not as Mathematically competent as Newton, who used the three laws of planetary motion of Kepler (1571-1830) and was able to Mathematically verify that only with an inverse square law could one arrive at elliptical planetary orbits. Hooke also helped Boyle (1627-1691) with his gas experiments, arriving at the so-called Boyle’s law of ideal gases. Hooke also worked with Wren (1632-1723) after the great fire of London.
Robert Hooke Confronts Newton
Hooke and Newton did temporarily reconcile their differences but remained mortal enemies during the later parts of their lives so much so that Newton had every portrait of Hooke at the Royal Society burnt. Newton was quite a would-be arsonist, and it is perhaps well known as a teen, he made a list of his past sins such as: “Threatening my father and mother Smith to burn them and the house over them.”
The legendary quote often attributed to Newton, which many authors believe demonstrates Newton’s magnanimity, is:
“If I have seen further [than others], it is by standing on the shoulders of giants – I. Newton.”
However, this quote is nothing of the kind, it was a direct attack on Hooke as he was short and a hunchback, so Newton was being cruel on two counts. In 1686, when the first book of Newton’s Principia was presented to the Royal Society, Hooke claimed that he had prompted Newton with the idea of Gravity, advising him that:
”The rule of the decrease of Gravity, being reciprocally as the squares of the distances from the Center”.
Isn’t it just beautiful how these giants enunciated their laws in this case the inverse square law?
Alas, once again, I have run out of space and must end here.
 who had the misfortune of making an enemy of Isaac Newton which to say the least was not best thing to do.){kind=link}