WHO is “England’s Leonardo”? Robert Hooke is who. It might be pushing it a bit to rank him with da Vinci, but he was certainly a versatile genius who has not had the recognition he deserves.
Allan Chapman has written a biography rich in detail; it needs concentrated reading and an ability to keep the main narrative in mind. Hooke was lucky to find himself among the virtuosi of the Restoration, those men who founded the Royal Society – the UK’s academy of sciences – and he was the society’s first secretary.
He was fired by the notion of experimentation, the new…
