Book review: The Curious Life of Robert Hooke

Derek Hirst is chairman of the history department at Washington University in St. Louis. His recent books include England in Conflict, 1603-1660. In this article he reviews The Curious Life of Robert Hooke, The Man Who Measured London, by Lisa Jardine.

Accounts of Isaac Newton's lonely labors, or of Galileo facing the Inquisition, suggest the appeal of the heroic to historians of science. How refreshing to find Lisa Jardine -- a British authority on Renaissance and scientific culture -- taking as her subject a man less than heroic, famous not for discoveries but for feuding over claims to discovery, a man who sexually exploited his female dependents, and who dosed himself to death with narcotics and noxious remedies. He left a cramped diary, but no great advance is linked to his name; even his portrait was lost until Jardine herself located it.

Robert Hooke (1635-1703) nevertheless deserves this finely researched and illustrated biography. Not least, there was the aggravating rivalry with Newton. This had its lighter moments: in 1683, four years before the publication of Newton's ''Principia'' (''Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy''), Hooke smugly announced that he had the answer to the curve of planetary orbits, but that he wasn't going to divulge it and so spoil others' pleasures and pains of discovery.

Not all scientists' rivalries were rooted in ego. Conflicts proliferated among experimenters who prized free communication and discussion, for intellectual property was as unclear as were the proper vehicles of publication. But Hooke was clearly a special case. Many of his contemporaries found his assertiveness, and frequent nonperformance, insufferable, but his edginess in Jardine's skilled hands becomes almost tangible. Poor boy made good, he had to reconcile the elevation expected of the virtuoso with his own low social status and with constant calls on his time as a paid scientific assistant and demonstrator. No wonder he could not bring everything to fruition.

•	You're no Isaac Newton The New York Times, Sunday, April 25, 2004 Byline: Derek Hirst