London’s Leonardo: The Life and Work of Robert Hooke by Jim Bennett, Michael Cooper, Michael Hunter and Lisa Jardine, Oxford University Press, £ 20, ISBN 0198525796
THREE hundred years ago Robert Hooke died at the age of 68. Not surprisingly, new books about him abound. London’s Leonardo convincingly shows that Hooke was good, but fails to elevate him to the heights of the title’s Italian polymath Leonardo da Vinci, a maestro if ever there was one.
Hooke was a competent second fiddle, notably as Robert Boyles’s laboratory assistant, Christopher Wren’s architectural and town planning partner and the Royal Society’s weekly provider…
