ABSTRACT
The diaries of Robert Hooke1 are summary in recording everyday events, and single words suffice for the character assassination of his colleagues; they are rather fuller when describing new and exciting scientific matters, whether astronomical, physical, chemical or biological; detailed when recording his finds and purchases in secondhand bookshops; and obsessive when noting the state of his health – his appetite, his hours of sleep, his experimentation with new medicines, his consumption of chocolate. Laconic though they are, Hooke’s notes on the effects of quack cures are in the nature of laboratory records of experiments on his own body, these notes then being available for future consultation.2 His day-to-day business, however, varied as it was, was constantly before him, and seemingly needed no elaboration – there are almost daily references such as ‘with Sir Ch:Wren’, sometimes with a place specified (‘at coffee house’, ‘at Pauls’), but often with no clue as to a reason for the meeting. (Hooke usually refers to Wren as Sir Ch:Wren, but to others, however eminent, often by surname alone.)
The very frequent meetings of Hooke and Wren (apart from attendance at the Royal Society3) were concerned with their building
activities, in which Wren was of course the senior partner. Indeed, their relationship is in some sense implied in their appointments for the rebuilding of St Paul’s: Wren was Surveyor and Hooke the Assistant Surveyor. However, Hooke was in his own right Surveyor for the City, and responsible for the approval of all reconstruction after the Great Fire of 1666. Included in this rebuilding were, of course, Wren’s 51 churches,4 and in practice many of the drawings for new buildings in the City were approved by both Hooke and Wren. It is now certain that two ‘Wren’ churches, St Edmund the King and St Benet Paul’s Wharf, were designed by Hooke alone, and that he made major contributions to at least three others (St Margaret Lothbury, St Martin Ludgate and St Peter upon Cornhill).5 Hooke was, in fact, and in a final sense justly, totally overshadowed as an architect by Wren; and, in the same way, and equally justly, he was overshadowed as a scientist by Newton. The fact remains that Newton had learned about colours in thin films from Hooke,6 but the coloured rings in the famous experiment are called Newton’s Rings – in the same way the Monument, the pillar in Fish Hill commemorating the Great Fire, and confidently attributed to Wren, was designed by Hooke.
