Hooke's journal found

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Kurt Albershardt <kurt () nv net>
Date: March 28, 2006 12:18:38 PM EST
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Hooke's journal found

Journal charting birth of modern science was lost for more than 200  
years

<http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12037638/from/RS.3/>
By Jeremy Lovell
Reuters
Updated: 10:12 p.m. ET March 27, 2006

LONDON - A manuscript charting the birth of modern science, lost for  
more than 200 years, goes on sale on Tuesday with a price tag in  
excess of one million pounds.

Hailed as "science's missing link", the journal of Robert Hooke  
contains details of experiments he conducted as curator at the Royal  
Society from 1662 and his correspondence as its secretary from 1677.

It was found by chance in a cupboard at a private house in Hampshire  
by experts from auctioneer Bonhams conducting a routine valuation.

The notes include a celebrated row between Hooke and Isaac Newton  
over planetary motion and gravity, and the lost record confirming the  
first observation of microbes by Antoni van Leeuwenhoek.

...

Hooke discovered that Jupiter revolved on its own axis, suggested  
that gravity could be measured using a pendulum and, as a talented  
architect, was chief assistant to Christopher Wren in rebuilding  
London after the Great Fire of 1666.

He also suggested the presence of gravitational 'vortices' pulling  
comets from their orbit, and invented the reflecting telescope, the  
sextant, the punched-paper record-keeper, the wind gauge, the worm  
gear and the wheel barometer.

But he fell out with Newton when he accused him of stealing from his  
original ideas when he produced his theory of light and colour in  
1672, and Newton removed all reference to Hooke from his famed  
Principia.

Despite Hooke's huge contribution to science and understanding, the  
only innovation to bear his name is Hooke's Law -- ut tensio sic vis  
(extension [of a spring] is proportional to force) - the shortest law  
in physics.

...


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