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The Curious Life of Robert Hooke Lisa Jardine

The Curious Life of Robert Hooke By Lisa Jardine

The Curious Life of Robert Hooke by Lisa Jardine


$28.49
Condition - Very Good
8 in stock

Summary

A biography of a largely forgotten maverick - a major figure in the 17th-century cultural and scientific revolutions. Lisa Jardine places Robert Hooke in the historical and intellectual context of his time, and examines his vast width of interests and achievements and his many influential friends.

The Curious Life of Robert Hooke Summary

The Curious Life of Robert Hooke: The Man Who Measured London by Lisa Jardine

A biography of a brilliant, largely forgotten, maverick - a major figure in the 17th - century cultural and scientific revolutions. Robert Hooke was an engineer, surveyor and scientist who was appointed London's Chief Surveyor after the Great Fire. He worked tirelessly with his great friend Sir Christopher Wren to rebuild London throughout the 1670s, personally creating some notable public and private buildings. Like his friends, Wren and Boyle, he was also a prominent experimentalist; he became the first Curator of Experiments at the Royal Society in London; he was the propounder of Hooke's Law of elasticity, co-discoverer of Boyle's Law for gases, designer of an early balance-spring watch, and a virtuoso performer of gruesome public anatomical dissections of animals. As his intimate and confessional diary records, Hooke's life was rich with melodrama. He came to London, fatherless, aged 13 to seek his fortune. He never married but formed a long-running illicit relationship with his niece (his housekeeper). A dandy and a man of restless energy, a workaholic and an inveterate socialiser, he was a well-known man-about-town, an enthusiastic daily imbiber of the designer drugs of the time: coffee, tea, chocolate and tobacco; he took cannabis for his headaches, and worked late into the night fuelled by poppy water (opium). In later life he became unkempt and bedridden by illness, but maintained his social and intellectual activities. He argued with most of his peers, but his closest friendship, with Wren, remained unscathed. After violent rows with Sir Isaac Newton his name was wiped from the records of the Royal Society and his portrait destroyed after his death.

The Curious Life of Robert Hooke Reviews

Of On A Grander Scale (2002): 'A wonderful book which looks set to be the definitive life of Wren for a long time to come' --Kathryn Hughes, Mail on Sunday 'Jardine writes with ease, style, enthusiasm and humanity' --Kerry Downes, TLS 'A full and fascinating biography...Jardine is particularly good on the extraordinary width of Wren's interests and achievements' --Antonia Fraser, New Statesman 'A great fist of an intellectual biography' --Andrew Saint, Guardian 'Imaginative, fluent and scholarly' --Linda Colley, The Times An 'extraordinary story...told with relish by Lisa Jardine, whose qualifications for the task are exactly right, for it needs a rare combination of scientific knowledge, historical skill, and narrative power...It was a life of quiet courage and great achievement, and Jardine's celebration of it does it ample justice' --AC Grayling, Independent on Sunday 'As we would expect from her, Jardine is excellent at placing Wren in the historical and intellectual context of his time...While going over familiar ground, she comes up with some startling discoveries' --Gavin Stamp, Daily Telegraph 'Immensely detailed...Jardine, following the scientific trail, has constructed a book that is as much an account of a movement as a biography of a man...Like its subtitle, this book is on a grander scale than other recent Wren biographies and is probably as definitive as current studies allow...Amazing value for the sheer amount of historical research; it sheds much light on Wren's extraordinary times' --Hugh Pearman, Sunday Times Of Ingenious Pursuits (1999): 'LJ has the knack of making science easy to understand. Her book brilliantly recaptures the excitement of the seventeenth-century scientists and the new word of objects they were finding and theorizing' Roy Porter Of Wordly Goods: 'A pleasure to read, as well as a pleasure to hold' Observer

About Lisa Jardine

Lisa Jardine is Professor of Renaissance Studies at QMW, London and honorary fellow of King's College, Cambridge. She has a weekly column in The Daily Telegraph, writes regularly for all the UK's major national newspapers and for numerous magazines in addition to presenting and appearing on many arts/history programmes for TV and radio (a regular co-host of R4's 'Start the Week'). She has judged the 1996 Whitbread Prize, the 1999 Guardian First Book Award, was chair of the 1997 Orange Prize. She is married to the architect John Hare, has three children and lives in London.

Additional information

GOR002026713
9780007149445
0007149441
The Curious Life of Robert Hooke: The Man Who Measured London by Lisa Jardine
Used - Very Good
Hardback
HarperCollins Publishers
20030915
352
N/A
Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
This is a used book - there is no escaping the fact it has been read by someone else and it will show signs of wear and previous use. Overall we expect it to be in very good condition, but if you are not entirely satisfied please get in touch with us

Customer Reviews - The Curious Life of Robert Hooke