麻豆传媒

The Man Who Knew Too Much: The life and work of Robert Hooke 1635鈥�1703 by Stephen Inwood, Pan Macmillan, 拢18.99, ISBN 0333782860 Reviewed by Michael Hunter

鈥淗E WAS anactive, restless, indefatigable genius鈥� is how the late 17th-century polymath Robert Hooke was described by a contemporary, and so he is presented in Stephen Inwood鈥檚 book.

Hooke played a pivotal part in the rebuilding of London after the Great Fire of 1666. He was a tireless inventor, responsible for such devices as the 鈥淗ooke joint鈥�, a universal coupling still used today. And he was an important scientist, remembered for Hooke鈥檚 law describing how springs behave. As Curator of Experiments to the newly founded Royal Society he published Micrographia (1665), which not only amazed contemporaries by illustrating and commenting on findings made with the microscope, but also offered novel explanations of all sorts of natural phenomena, from the life story of the mosquito to the origin of lunar craters.

Few of Hooke鈥檚 buildings have survived, however, while his scientific achievements have been overshadowed by those of his contemporary and rival, Isaac Newton. Inwood uses The Man Who Knew Too Much to recount and celebrate Hooke鈥檚 busy life and to probe at the reasons for his subsequent neglect. He makes a point of dealing with Hooke鈥檚 activities on a day-to-day basis; this sometimes degenerates into something of a catalogue but does give a sense of the sheer range of his concerns, in contrast to Newton who, locked in his ivory tower, could devote all his time to a single intellectual problem.

With so many competing demands on his time, Hooke put to one side problems that he found intractable, often returning to them only when prompted to do so by learning that he was about to be pre-empted in their solution, infuriating Newton and other rivals as a result.

Much has been written on different aspects of Hooke鈥檚 career, but it has been nearly 50 years since anyone attempted a biography of him. In this lucid and informative book, Inwood makes full and effective use of the extensive secondary literature that now exists. Factual errors are few, though there is a little repetition (and the index seems to be one page out).

The book鈥檚 chief flaw is that, though balanced and fair in his account of Hooke鈥檚 rivalry with Newton and others, Inwood has less to say about the extent to which Hooke shared in testing and advancing scientific theories with men such as his mentor, the aristocratic experimentalist Robert Boyle. Instead, he is constantly stressing Hooke鈥檚 own achievements and how he was 鈥渁head of his time鈥�. But for anyone interested in Hooke, this is still a fascinating and generally reliable guide to an extraordinary man and his career.