Robert Hooke was born on July 18, 1635 in Freshwater, Isle of Wight. He was one of the most brilliant and versatile seventeenth century English scientists. He attended Oxford University but never graduated. Yet he was an extremely talented inventor, instrument-maker and building designer. He assisted Robert Boyle in the construction of Boylean air pump. In 1662, he was appointed as Curator of Experiments to the newly founded Royal Society. In 1665, he became Professor of Geometry in Gresham College where he carried out his astronomical observations. He built a Gregorian reflecting telescope; discovered the fifth star in the trapezium and an asterism in the constellation Orion; suggested that Jupiter rotates on its axis; plotted detailed sketches of Mars which were later used in the 19th century to determine the planet’s rate of rotation; stated the inverse square law to describe planetary motion, which Newton modified later etc. He was elected Fellow of Royal Society and also served as the Society’s Secretary from 1667 to 1682. In his series of observations presented in Micrographia, he suggested wave theory of light and first used the word ‘cell’ in a biological context as a result of his studies of cork.
Robert Hooke is best known to physicists for his discovery of law of elasticity: Ut tensio, sic vis (This is a Latin expression and it means as the distortion, so the force). This law laid the basis for studies of stress and strain and for understanding the elastic materials.
