Promotional Information

* Lead title A biography of a brilliant, largely forgotten maverick -- a major figure in the seventeenth century cultural and scientific revolutions * The ongoing interest in Isaac Newton and his contemporaries means the book has the potential to appeal to a wide audience * Received widespread praise on hardback publication * PS section includes an in-depth author interview and a new essay by Jardine on Hooke's cryptic will.

About the Author

Lisa Jardine is Professor of Renaissance Studies at QMW, London, and honorary Fellow of King's College, Cambridge. She writes regularly for all the UK's major national broadsheets. She has judged the 1996 Whitbread Prize, the 1999 Guardian First Book Award and was chair of the 1997 Orange Prize. She is married, has three children, and lives in London.

Reviews

'Jardine...has made important archival discoveries...her prose sparkles.' Sunday Telegraph 'Jardine sets out to penetrate the obscurity and show us the man...a fascinating, impeccably researched account.' Jenny Uglow, The Guardian 'Lisa Jardine is a new star on England's literary and historical scene. She has a gift, which so few historians possess, of making the past seem relevant to our own times.' Paul Johnson

English scientist Robert Hooke (1635-1703) is known to history more for losing quarrels with better-known scientists than for his achievements. He dared challenge Newton for credit as discoverer of the inverse-square law of gravitational attraction and lost. In his dispute with Dutch scientist Christaan Huygens over who invented the isochronous pendulum clock, Hooke fared slightly better, since it was discovered that unfriendly members of the fledging Royal Society were slipping word of his discoveries to Huygens. Cambridge Renaissance scholar Jardine follows up her 2002 biography of Christopher Wren with this satisfying rehabilitation of Hooke, Wren's colleague in rebuilding London after the devastating fire of 1666. Jardine argues that Hooke played an equal role in many of the projects attributed to Wren, most notably the dome of Saint Paul's and the Monument to the Fire of London. Hooke never made the leap into greatness by adequately working out and proving his "hunches," in large part because of other scientists' demands on his time. As a young man, he was Robert Boyle's trusted assistant. At the Royal Society, which he helped found, he served as curator of experiments and secretary. After the fire he was forced to juggle society members' increasingly unreasonable demands with his work as surveyor and associate to Wren. Hooke grew ill-tempered in his later years and was finally removed from his Royal Society posts. Jardine convincingly attributes his physical deterioration to decades of self-medicating and overwork. Sure to become the standard life of Hooke, Jardine's sympathetic study will please readers interested in the early years of modern science and scientific biographies. Illus. (Feb. 5) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.