an eminent English mathematician and philosopher, was the son of John Hooke, minister of Freshwater, in the Isle of Wight, where he was born in 1635. He very early discovered a genius for mechanics, by making curious toys with great art and dexterity. He was educated under Dr Busby in Westminster school, where he not only acquired a competent share of Greek and Latin, together with an insight into Hebrew and some other oriental languages, but also made himself master of a considerable part of Euclid's Elements. About the year 1653, he went to Christ-Church, Oxford, and in 1655 was introduced to the Philosophical Society of that place, where, discovering his mechanical genius, he was first employed to assist Dr Willis in his operations in chemistry, and afterwards recommended to the honourable Robert Boyle, whom he served several years in the same capacity. About this time he was also instructed in astronomy by Dr Seth Ward, Savilian professor of that science; and henceforward he distinguished himself by many noble inventions and improvements of the mechanical kind. He invented several astronomical instruments, for making observations both at sea and land; and was particularly serviceable to Mr Boyle in completing the invention of the air-pump. Sir John Cutler having founded a mechanic school in 1664, he settled an annual stipend on Mr Hooke, instructing the president, council, and fellows of the Royal Society to direct him with respect to the number and subjects of his lectures; and on the 11th of January 1665 he was elected by that society curator of experiments for life, with an additional salary. In 1666 he produced to the Royal Society a model for rebuilding the city of London, destroyed by fire, with which the society was well pleased; but although the lord mayor and aldermen preferred it to that of the city surveyor, it was not carried into execution. As the rebuilding of the city, according to the act of parliament, required an able person to let out the ground to the proprietors, Mr Hooke was appointed one of the surveyors; and in this employment he acquired most part of his estate. Mr Oldenburgh, secretary to the Royal Society, having died in 1677, Mr Hooke was appointed to supply his place, and begin to take minutes at the meeting in October, but did not publish the Transactions. In the beginning of the year 1687, his brother's daughter, Mrs Grace Hooke, who had lived with him several years, died; and he was so affected with grief at her death, that he hardly ever recovered it, but was observed from that time to become less active, more melancholy, and even more cynical, than ever. At the same time, a chancery suit in which he was concerned with Sir John Cutler, on account of his salary for reading the Cutlerian Lectures, made him very uneasy, and increased his disorder. In 1691 he was employed in forming the plan of the hospital near Hoxton, founded by Robert Ask, alderman of London, who appoint- ed Archbishop Tillotson one of his executors; and in December the same year, Hooke was created doctor of physic by a warrant from that prelate. In June 1696, the chancery suit with Sir John Cutler was determined in his favour, to his inexpressible satisfaction. In the same year an order was granted to him for repeating most of his experiments at the expense of the Royal Society, upon a promise of his finishing the accounts, observations, and deductions from them, and of perfecting the description of all the instruments contrived by him; but his increasing illness and general decay rendered him unable to perform the task. He continued some years in this wasting condition; and languishing till he was quite emaciated, he died on the 3d of March 1702, at his lodgings in Gresham College, and was buried in St Helen's Church, Bishopsgate Street.

In his person he exhibited but a mean appearance, being of short stature, crooked, pale, lean, and of a meagre aspect, with lank brown hair, which he wore very long, and hanging over his face. His temper was peevish, melancholy, mistrustful; and though possessed of great philosophical knowledge, he had so much ambition, that he would be thought the only man who could invent or discover. Hence it has been asserted by some that he frequently laid claim to the inventions and discoveries of others, whilst he boasted of many of his own which he never communicated. He wrote, 1. Lectiones Cutterianae, or Cutterian Lectures; 2. Micrographia, or Descriptions of Minute Bodies made by Magnifying Glasses; 3. A Description of Helioscopes; 4. A Description of some Mechanical Improvements of Lamps and Water-poiyes, 4to; 5. Philosophical Collections. After his death were published, Posthumous Works, collected from his papers by Richard Waller, secretary to the Royal Society.

The following is a chronological view of the inventions to which he laid claim. It would be harsh to say, with regard to any of them, that he did not at least think himself an inventor; with respect to several, his priority is beyond dispute.

1656. Barometer, or weather-glass. 1657. A scapement, for maintaining the vibration of a pendulum; and not long afterwards the regulating or balance-spring for watches. 1658. The double-barrelled air-pump, and the conical pendulum. His first employment of the conical pendulum was not less ingenious and scientific than it was original. He employed it to represent the mutual gravitation of the planets; a fact which he had most systematically announced. He had shown, that a force, perfectly analogous to gravity on this earth, operated on the surface of the moon and of Jupiter. Considering the numerous round pits on the surface of the moon, surrounded with a sort of wall, and having a little eminence in the middle, as the production of volcanoes, he inferred that the ejected matter fell back again to the moon, as such matter falls back again to the earth. Seeing Jupiter surrounded with an atmosphere, which accompanied and therefore pressed on him, as our air presses on the earth, he inferred that it was the same kind of power that maintained the sun and other planets in a round form. He inferred a force to the sun from the circulation round him, calling it a gravitation; and said that it was not the earth which described the ellipse, but the centre of gravity of the earth and moon. He therefore made a conical pendulum, the tendency of which to a vertical position represented the gravitation to the sun, and which was projected at right angles to the vertical plane, and showed experimentally how the different proportions of the projectile and centripetal tendencies produced various degrees of eccentricity in the orbit. He then added another pendulum, describing a cone round the first, whilst this described a cone round the vertical line in order to see what point between them described the ellipse. The results of the experiment were intricate and unsatisfactory; but the thought was ingenious. He candidly acknowledged that he had not discovered the true law of gravitation which would produce the description of an ellipse round the focus, owing to his want of due mathematical knowledge; and therefore he left this investigation to his superiors. Sir Isaac Newton was the person who made the discovery, after having entertained the same notions of the forces which connected the bodies of the solar system, before he had any acquaintance with Dr Hooke, or knew of his speculations.

1660. The engine for cutting clock and watch wheels. The chief phenomena of capillary attraction. The freezing of water a fixed temperature. 1663. The method of supplying air to a diving bell. The number of vibrations made by a musical chord. 1664. His Micrographia was, by the council of the Royal Society, ordered to be printed. In that work there are many just notions respecting respiration, the composition of the atmosphere, and the nature of light, which were afterwards attributed as discoveries to Mayow and others, who, though we are far from supposing that they stole their discoveries from Dr Hooke, were certainly anticipated by him.

1666. A quadrant by reflection. 1667. The marine barometer, and the gage for sounding unfathomable depths. 1668. The measurement of a degree of the meridian, with a view to determine the figure of the earth, by means of a zenith sector. 1669. The fact of the conservatio virium vivarum, and that in all the productions and extinctions of motion, the accumulated forces were as the squares of the final or initial velocities. This doctrine he announced in all its generality and importance, deducing from it the consequences which John Bernoulli valued himself so highly upon, and which are the chief facts produced by Leibnitz in support of his doctrine of the forces of bodies in motion. But Hooke was perfectly aware of their entire correspondence with the Cartesian or common doctrine, and was one of the first in applying the celebrated 39th proposition of Newton's Principia to his former positions on this subject, as a mathematical demonstration of them.

1673. That the catenarian was the best form of an arch. 1674. Steam-engine on Newcomen's principle. 1679. That the air was the sole source of heat in burning; that combustion is the solution of the inflammable vapour in air; and that in this solution the air gives out its heat and light. That nitre explodes and causes bodies to burn without air, because it consists of this air accompanied by its heat and light in a condensed or solid state, and air supports flame because it contains the same ingredients as gunpowder, that is, a nitrous spirit; that this air dissolves something in the blood whilst it is exposed to it in the lungs in a very expanded surface, and, when saturated with it, can no longer support life nor flame, but in the act of solution produces animal heat; that the arterial and venal blood differ on account of this something being wanting in one of them.

1680. He first observed the secondary vibrations of elastic bodies, and their connection with harmonic sounds. A glass containing water, and excited by a fiddlestick, threw the water into undulations, which were square, hexagonal, octagonal, &c., showing that it made vibrations subordinate to the total vibration; and that the fundamental sound was accompanied by its octave, its twelfth, and so on.

1681. He exhibited musical tones by means of toothed wheels, whirled round and rubbed with a quill, which dropped from tooth to tooth, and produced tones proportioned to the frequency of the cracks or snaps. He read a paper before the Royal Society, in which he affirms, that some years before that period he had proposed a method of discoursing at a distance, not by sound, but by sight. He then proceeds to describe a very accurate and complete telegraph. But, some years previous to 1684, Amontons had not invented his telegraph; so that, though the Marquis of Worcester unquestionably gave the first hint of this instrument, Dr Hooke appears to have first brought it to a useful state.

To him also we are indebted for many other discoveries of lesser note; such as the wheel barometer, the universal joint, the manometer screw, divided quadrant, telescopic sights for astronomical instruments, representation of a muscular fibre by a chain of bladders, experiments showing the inflection of light, and its attraction for solid bodies, the curvilinear path of light through the atmosphere.