Talk:Robert Hooke

Wadham?
The article is a bit confused as it stands. In one place in the Oxford section, it says [with citation] that H secured a chorister's place at CC, but elsewhere in that section we have Wadham was then under the guidance of John Wilkins. So what? The DNB entry for H doesn't even mention Wadham. Delete? 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 10:31, 24 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Problem solved by rewording so that the emphasis is on Wilkins and the Oxford Philosophical Club rather than the College. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 10:58, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

Addressing arguments against portrait
The caption for the main image mentions a argument opposing the identification of the portrait of Hooke. However, the specifics of that argument aren’t mentioned. I unfortunately can’t access the article myself, but to anyone who can, could they write about them in the likeness section? Thank you. Leevine65 (talk) 19:49, 16 September 2023 (UTC)
 * , for this and a tonne of other reasons, you really need to sign up the Wikipedia Library, which gives you free access to a vast collection of resources, (notably JSTOR and Oxford Journals, which are heavily cited in Wikipedia (perhaps for this reason). Using the search box, I typed Portrait of Robert Hooke and immediately got access to both Griffing's original conjecture and Whittaker's rebuttal.
 * As far as inclusion in the article is concerned, we have a problem. Both papers are presented as "Letter to the Editor": they are not peer-reviewed, so we can't really say much more about them than is given in the caption. But do please read the letters and see if you can propose anything based on them. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 23:13, 16 September 2023 (UTC)
 * You will also need to read Comments on Dr Whittaker's letter and the article, which is Griffing's counterargument. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 23:19, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 11 December 2023
There is a possible typo under the section "Personality and disputes", in the second paragraph, last sentence.

The whole paragraph reads as follows, with emphasis on the potential typo:

"On the other hand, as the Royal Society's curator of experiments, Hooke was tasked to demonstrate many ideas sent in to the Society. Some evidence suggests that Hooke subsequently assumed credit for some of these ideas.[citation needed] Yet in this period of immense scientific progress, numerous ideas were developed in multiple places roughly simultaneously. Immensely busy, Hook let many of his own ideas remain undeveloped, although others he patented." — Preceding unsigned comment added by Frazi109 (talk • contribs) 18:26, 11 December 2023 (UTC) ‎
 * ✅, thank you for spotting it. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 20:28, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

Removal of citation needed sections
Hi all, I've removed the parts that said "citation needed" since 2020, and tried to move the orphaned parts of that section to somewhere else in the article. Please feel free to revert if you disagree with the changes. Red Fiona (talk) 20:56, 5 January 2024 (UTC)


 * I have cut this text for now.
 * "Reputedly, Hooke was a staunch friend and ally. In his early training at Wadham College, he was among ardent royalists, particularly Christopher Wren. Yet allegedly, Hooke was also proud, and often annoyed by intellectual competitors. Hooke contended that Oldenburg had leaked details of Hooke's watch escapement. Otherwise, Hooke guarded his own ideas and used ciphers. The Royal Society's Hooke papers, rediscovered in 2006, (after disappearing when Newton took over) may open up a modern reassessment. In the 20th century, researchers Robert Gunther and Margaret revived Hooke's legacy, establishing Hooke among the most influential scientists of his time."
 * Yet more uncited material about royalism reads as editorialising and it starts with an error (Hooke was not at Wadham, that was Wilkins. It just seems to have been bunged in at the top of the #Personality and disputes section arbitrarily. Maybe a place can be found for the [uncited] material about Oldenburg, the ciphers [also uncited] and the recovery of the Hooke papers at the RS, but it is not obvious right now. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 00:42, 8 January 2024 (UTC)


 * I have also deleted Hooke's collaboration with Christopher Wren also included St Paul's Cathedral, whose dome uses a method of construction conceived by Hooke. because, if it refers to drawing a perfect circle for the base, it is directly contradicted by Inwood (p399). --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 12:35, 8 January 2024 (UTC)


 * I have deleted Hooke also participated in the design of the Pepys Library, which held the manuscripts of the diary of Samuel Pepys, the most frequently cited eyewitness account of the Great Fire of London. as impossible because Pepys and Hooke both died in 1703. I assume that Hyam (1982) is being cited for " the most frequently cited eyewitness account", not the architecture. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 17:33, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I have subsequently found a reference in Inwood (2003), p.236 which says that Hooke made a design (and no more) for a building at Magdalene College which could be the one that subsequently became the Pepys Library. This to me makes it too tenuous and I have not reinstated it. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 11:15, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Sully and Derham
Two important citations appear to fail verification, so would someone please check "Henry Sully, writing in Paris in 1737, described the anchor escapement as "an admirable invention of which Dr. Hooke, formerly professor of geometry in Gresham College at London, was the inventor". William Derham also attributes it to Hooke."

as I can't believe they were added to the article in bad faith. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 21:18, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

I should make clear that the original text of the citations did not have URLs. These are the results of my searches and may be incorrect. Also, Derham says that Hooke claimed it, he does not say it is true, afaics. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 21:25, 10 January 2024 (UTC)


 * I shall delete these assertions. Inwood writes "the oft-repeated claim that Hooke invented the anchor escapement originated in William Derham's The artificial clock-maker (1696), not with Hooke, and is now regarded as untrue."  --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 11:21, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Blunder?
Is this WP:original research

"Several commentators have followed Hooke in calling Newton's spiral path mistaken, or even a 'blunder', but there are also the facts: (a) that Hooke left out of account Newton's specific statement that the motion resulted from dropping 'a heavy body suspended in the Air' (i.e. a resisting medium), see Newton to Hooke, 28 November 1679, document #236, and compare Hooke's report to the Royal Society on 11 December 1679 where Hooke reported the matter 'supposing no resistance', see D Gjertsen, 'Newton Handbook' (1986), at p. 259; and (b) that Hooke's reply of 9 December 1679 to Newton considered the cases of motion both with and without air resistance: The resistance-free path was what Hooke called an 'elliptueid'; but a line in Hooke's diagram showing the path for his case of air resistance was, though elongated, also another inward-spiralling path ending at the Earth's centre: Hooke wrote 'where the Medium ... has a power of impeding and destroying its motion the curve in which it would move would be some what like the Line AIKLMNOP &c and ... would terminate in the center C'. Hooke's path including air resistance was therefore to this extent like Newton's. The diagrams are also online: see Wilson, p. 241, showing Newton's 1679 diagram with spiral, and extract of his letter; also Wilson, p. 242 showing Hooke's 1679 diagram including two paths, closed curve and spiral. Newton pointed out in his later correspondence over the priority claim that the descent in a spiral 'is true in a resisting medium such as our air is'."

I can't find any commentators that use the term "blunder"? --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 20:41, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I have decided to be bold and just delete it. It reads to me as too close to WP:OR and it is too incidental to the topic in any case – do we really want to take space to relitigate the Hooke-Newton dispute? At best, it is a separate article but more practically it is one for specialist books: it is not encyclopedic, IMO. Anyone care to defend it?--𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 16:44, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

Micrography Observ. (journal)
I can't find any source for this assertion: His explanation of this phenomenon [capilliary action] was subsequently published in Micrography Observ. issue 6, in which he also explored the nature of "the fluidity of gravity". I can neither find such a journal nor the phrase "the fluidity of gravity" anywhere that is not a copy of this article. The British Library online catalogue doesn't go back before 1885 but maybe someone more familiar with the BL could find something? Anyway, as I don't see that it is essential to the narrative, I have deleted it rather than leave so obvious an invitation for a citation needed tag. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 17:55, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

Gribbin and Gribbin
Has anyone got Out of the Shadow of a Giant: Hooke, Halley and the Birth of British Science? It is cited but no page number is given. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 17:08, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Doctor of Physic
In anyone has access through their University to would they clarify which institution awarded him the doctorate, please? (Last sentence of Royal Society section). Was it a medical doctorate? (in the old sense of the word physic). 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 20:18, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Further research reveals that it was awarded by Doctors' Commons, a contemporary lawyers association. It has nothing to do with medicine (or Physics). It is mentioned in the ODNB 1885 edition but not in the current edition. It may be an honorary degree? Given the lack of any supporting information, it seems to me to be WP:UNDUE. I propose that we follow Oxford's lead and drop it too. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 12:05, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
 * FWIW, Gribbin & Gribbin (2017, p 214) say that it was Oxford that awarded the Doctorate on the "advice" of John Tillotson (Archbishop of Canterbury) at an unspecified date between March 1690 and December 1692 [corresponding to a missing volume of Hooke's diary]. From the commendation quoted, it is clearly an honorary degree. I still consider it incidental but it is mentioned in footnote c as an explanation of the "SRS, MD" honorifics. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 11:22, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

GA nomination
I have finished work on a full-scale spring-clean of the article. I have provided citations for the many assertions, deleted some dubious and uncited ones (after searching for evidence) and verified (or not) the citations that were there. I have also cleared out or summarised the tangential material. Some of the rewording is fairly extensive. The big risk is wp:righting great wrongs in the Hooke/Newton dispute so I hope that I have maintained NPOV.

I think that it now GA standard and have added it to the "Physics and astronomy" queue for review. We shall see if it makes the cut. No doubt it could be improved further in the meantime, so please do so.

you peer reviewed it in April 2013. If you have the time and inclination, your comments on this version would be most welcome. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 10:58, 9 February 2024 (UTC)


 * Very well done! It is nicely coherent and flowing. Guy (help! - typo?) 20:17, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Possible DYK hooks
Suggestions welcome! My very threadbare list just has
 * No authenticated portrait of Robert Hooke exists. This situation has sometimes been attributed to the heated conflicts between Hooke and Newton, although his biographer Allan Chapman rejects as a myth the claims that Newton or his acolytes had deliberately destroyed his portrait.

Anyone else? --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 21:04, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

At another place, prompted these two
 * In addition to his work as a scientist, Robert Hooke was an architect who designed the Monument to the Great Fire of London so that it could also have a practical value as a scientific instrument.
 * In addition to his work as a scientist, Robert Hooke was Surveyor to the City of London and chief assistant architect to Christopher Wren, in which capacities he helped rebuild London after the Great Fire of 1666.

Any more? --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 16:55, 18 February 2024 (UTC)

A truth that is glimpsed and a truth that is demonstrated
Ball's attribution of this aphorism to Clairaut is questionable as it appears rather more likely to be Mme du Chastelet's own work (since she has carefully credited all the other parts of her book to their respective authors). But until it is challenged by later academic research we must accept it at face value as it would violate Wikipedia policy WP:No original research to assert a different attribution. Consequently, Ball is cited in the concluding sentence of the section on Gravitation.

The full quotation is in section IX of

though the introduction (Avertissement) in Volume1 of Mme du Chastelet's translation merely says that the Exposition is drawn in the main from the works of Clairaut or from the notebooks that he had previously given in the form of lessons to her. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 01:18, 19 February 2024 (UTC)


 * I may have been too hard on Ball: I suspect he had his own doubts because he cites Du Chastelet and Stephen Peter Rigaud to attribute the aphorism to Clairaut. The former does not attribute the remark, it was Rigaud (in ) at p. 66. The plot thickens! --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 18:56, 21 February 2024 (UTC)