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Robert Hooke

(1635-1703)

Who Was Robert Hooke?

Scientist Robert Hooke was educated at Oxford and spent his career at the Royal Society and Gresham College. His research and experiments ranged from astronomy to biology to physics; he is particularly recognized for the observations he made while using a microscope and for "Hooke's Law" of elasticity. Hooke died in London in 1703.

Early Life and Education

Robert Hooke was born in the town of Freshwater, on England’s Isle of Wight, on July 18, 1635. His parents were John Hooke, who served as curate for the local church parish, and Cecily (née Gyles) Hooke.

Initially a sickly child, Hooke grew to be a quick learner who was interested in painting and adept at making mechanical toys and models. After his father’s death in 1648, the 13-year-old Hooke was sent to London to apprentice with painter Peter Lely. This connection turned out to be a short one, and he went instead to study at London’s Westminster School.

In 1653, Hooke enrolled at Oxford's Christ Church College, where he supplemented his meager funds by working as an assistant to the scientist Robert Boyle. While studying subjects ranging from astronomy to chemistry, Hooke also made influential friends, such as future architect Christopher Wren.

Teaching, Research and Other Occupations

Hooke was appointed curator of experiments for the newly formed Royal Society of London in 1662, a position he obtained with Boyle's support. Hooke became a fellow of the society in 1663.

Unlike many of the gentleman scientists he interacted with, Hooke required an income. In 1665, he accepted a position as professor of geometry at Gresham College in London. After the "Great Fire" destroyed much of London in 1666, Hooke became a city surveyor. Working with Wren, he assessed the damage and redesigned many of London’s streets and public buildings.

Major Discoveries and Achievements

A true polymath, the topics Hooke covered during his career include comets, the motion of light, the rotation of Jupiter, gravity, human memory and the properties of air. In all of his studies and demonstrations, he adhered to the scientific method of experimentation and observation. Hooke also utilized the most up-to-date instruments in his many projects.

Hooke’s most important publication was Micrographia , a 1665 volume documenting experiments he had made with a microscope. In this groundbreaking study, he coined the term "cell" while discussing the structure of cork. He also described flies, feathers and snowflakes, and correctly identified fossils as remnants of once-living things.

The 1678 publication of Hooke's Lectures of Spring shared his theory of elasticity; in what came to be known as "Hooke’s Law," he stated that the force required to extend or compress a spring is proportional to the distance of that extension or compression. In an ongoing, related project, Hooke worked for many years on the invention of a spring-regulated watch.

Personal Life and Death

Hooke never married. His niece, Grace Hooke, his longtime live-in companion and housekeeper, as well as his eventual lover, died in 1687; Hooke was inconsolable at the loss.

In his last year of life, Hooke suffered from symptoms that may have been caused by diabetes. He died at the age of 67 in London on March 3, 1703.

QUICK FACTS

• Name: Robert Hooke
• Birth Year: 1635
• Birth date: July 18, 1635
• Birth City: Freshwater, Isle of Wight
• Birth Country: England
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: Robert Hooke is known as a "Renaissance Man" of 17th century England for his work in the sciences, which covered areas such as astronomy, physics and biology.
• Education and Academia
• Journalism and Nonfiction
• Architecture
• Business and Industry
• Science and Medicine
• Technology and Engineering
• Astrological Sign: Cancer
• Wadham College
• Death Year: 1703
• Death date: March 3, 1703
• Death City: London
• Death Country: England

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CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: Robert Hooke Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/scientists/robert-hooke
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: June 22, 2020
• Original Published Date: April 2, 2014

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Biography of Robert Hooke, the Man Who Discovered Cells

Robert Hooke/Wikimedia Commons/Public domain

• Cell Biology
• Weather & Climate

Robert Hooke (July 18, 1635–March 3, 1703) was a 17th-century "natural philosopher"—an early scientist—noted for a variety of observations of the natural world. But perhaps his most notable discovery came in 1665 when he looked at a sliver of cork through a microscope lens and discovered cells.

Fast Facts: Robert Hooke

• Known For: Experiments with a microscope, including the discovery of cells, and coining of the term
• Born: July 18, 1635 in Freshwater, the Isle of Wight, England
• Parents: John Hooke, vicar of Freshwater and his second wife Cecily Gyles
• Died: March 3, 1703 in London
• Education: Westminster in London, and Christ Church at Oxford, as a laboratory assistant of Robert Boyle
• Published Works: Micrographia: or some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies made by Magnifying Glasses with Observations and Inquiries Thereupon

Robert Hooke was born July 18, 1635, in Freshwater on the Isle of Wight off the southern coast of England, the son of the vicar of Freshwater John Hooke and his second wife Cecily Gates. His health was delicate as a child, so Robert was kept at home until after his father died. In 1648, when Hooke was 13, he went to London and was first apprenticed to painter Peter Lely and proved fairly good at the art, but he left because the fumes affected him. He enrolled at Westminster School in London, where he received a solid academic education including Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and also gained training as an instrument maker.

He later went on to Oxford and, as a product of Westminster, entered Christ Church college, where he became the friend and laboratory assistant of Robert Boyle, best known for his natural law of gases known as Boyle's Law. Hooke invented a wide range of things at Christ Church, including a balance spring for watches, but he published few of them. He did publish a tract on capillary attraction in 1661, and it was that treatise the brought him to the attention of the Royal Society for Promoting Natural History, founded just a year earlier.

The Royal Society

The Royal Society for Promoting Natural History (or Royal Society) was founded in November 1660 as a group of like-minded scholars. It was not associated with a particular university but rather funded under the patronage of the British king Charles II. Members during Hooke's day included Boyle, the architect Christopher Wren , and the natural philosophers John Wilkins and Isaac Newton; today, it boasts 1,600 fellows from around the world.  

In 1662, the Royal Society offered Hooke the initially unpaid curator position, to furnish the society with three or four experiments each week—they promised to pay him as soon as the society had the money. Hooke did eventually get paid for the curatorship, and when he was named a professor of geometry, he gained housing at Gresham college. Hooke remained in those positions for the rest of his life; they offered him the opportunity to research whatever interested him.

Observations and Discoveries

Hooke was, like many of the members of the Royal Society, wide-reaching in his interests. Fascinated by seafaring and navigation, Hooke invented a depth sounder and water sampler. In September 1663, he began keeping daily weather records, hoping that would lead to reasonable weather predictions. He invented or improved all five basic meteorological instruments (the barometer, thermometer, hydroscope, rain gauge, and wind gauge), and developed and printed a form to record weather data.

Some 40 years before Hooke joined the Royal Society, Galileo had invented the microscope (called an occhiolino  at the time, or "wink" in Italian); as curator, Hooke bought a commercial version and began an extremely wide and varying amount of research with it, looking at plants, molds, sand, and fleas. Among his discoveries were fossil shells in sand (now recognized as foraminifera), spores in mold, and the bloodsucking practices of mosquitoes and lice.

Discovery of the Cell

Hooke is best known today for his identification of the cellular structure of plants. When he looked at a sliver of cork through his microscope, he noticed some "pores" or "cells" in it. Hooke believed the cells had served as containers for the "noble juices" or "fibrous threads" of the once-living cork tree. He thought these cells existed only in plants, since he and his scientific contemporaries had observed the structures only in plant material.

Nine months of experiments and observations are recorded in his 1665 book "Micrographia: or some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies made by Magnifying Glasses with Observations and Inquiries Thereupon," the first book describing observations made through a microscope. It featured many drawings, some of which have been attributed to Christopher Wren, such as that of a detailed flea observed through the microscope. Hooke was the first person to use the word "cell" to identify microscopic structures when he was describing cork.

His other observations and discoveries include:

• Hooke's Law: A law of elasticity for solid bodies, which described how tension increases and decreases in a spring coil
• Various observations on the nature of gravity, as well as heavenly bodies such as comets and planets
• The nature of fossilization, and its implications for biological history

Death and Legacy

Hooke was a brilliant scientist, a pious Christian, and a difficult and impatient man. What kept him from true success was a lack of interest in mathematics. Many of his ideas inspired and were completed by others in and outside of the Royal Society, such as the Dutch pioneer microbiologist Antoni van Leeuwenhoek (1632–1723), navigator and geographer William Dampier (1652–1715), geologist Niels Stenson (better known as Steno, 1638–1686), and Hooke's personal nemesis, Isaac Newton (1642–1727). When the Royal Society published Newton's "Principia" in 1686, Hooke accused him of plagiarism, a situation so profoundly affecting Newton that he put off publishing "Optics" until after Hooke was dead.

Hooke kept a diary in which he discussed his infirmities, which were many, but although it doesn't have literary merit like Samuel Pepys', it also describes many details of daily life in London after the Great Fire. He died, suffering from scurvy and other unnamed and unknown illnesses, on March 3, 1703. He neither married nor had children.

• Egerton, Frank N. " A History of the Ecological Sciences, Part 16: Robert Hooke and the Royal Society of London ." Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America 86.2 (2005): 93–101. Print.
• Jardine, Lisa. " Monuments and Microscopes: Scientific Thinking on a Grand Scale in the Early Royal Society ." Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 55.2 (2001): 289–308. Print.
• Nakajima, Hideto. " Robert Hooke's Family and His Youth: Some New Evidence from the Will of the Rev. John Hooke ." Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 48.1 (1994): 11–16. Print.
• Whitrow, G. J. " Robert Hooke ." Philosophy of Science 5.4 (1938): 493–502. Print.

" Fellows ." The Royal Society.

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Robert hooke.

Hooke was fortunate in gaining the respect of Dr Busby and being left to follow his own pursuits of knowledge just as he had before attending Westminster School.

... Hooke never took a bachelor's degree [ but ] Oxford had given him more than a thousand degrees could match.

... use of springs instead of gravity for making a body vibrate in any posture.

Before I went to bed I sat up till two o'clock in my chamber reading Mr Hooke's Microscopical Observations, the most ingenious book that ever I read in my life.

Micrographia remains one of the masterpieces of seventeenth century science. ... [ it ] presented not a systematic investigation of any one question, but a bouquet of observations with courses from the mineral, animal and vegetable kingdoms. Above all, the book suggested what the microscope could do for biological science.

Wren and Hooke dominated and guided the work, and cemented a friendship that lasted throughout their lives. To Hooke the position of surveyor was a financial boon, more than compensating for the uncertainty of his other income.

... of compounding the celestiall motions of the planetts of a direct motion by the tangent ( inertial motion ) and an attractive motion towards the centrall body ... my supposition is that the Attraction always is in a duplicate proportion to the Distance from the Center Reciprocall ...

He was a brisk walker, and enjoyed walking in the fields north of the City. ... he generally rose early, perhaps to save candles, and to work in daylight and prevent strain to his eyes. ... Sometimes Hooke would work all through the night, and then have a nap after dinner. As well as drinking a variety of waters ... he drank brandy, port, claret, sack, and birch juice wine which he found to be delicious. He also had a barrel of Flanstead's ale and Tillotson's ale. There are a few instances when he recorded that he had been drunk ... He was a gregarious person, who liked to meet people, particularly those who had travelled abroad ...

.. often troubled with headaches, giddiness, and fainting, and with a general decay all over, which hindered his philosophical studies, yet he still read some lectures whenever he was able.

[ Huygens ' Preface ] is concerning those properties of gravity which I myself first discovered and showed to this Society and years since, which of late Mr Newton has done me the favour to print and publish as his own inventions. And particularly that of the oval figure of the Earth which was read by me to this Society about 27 years since upon the occasion of the carrying the pendulum clocks to sea and at two other times since, though I have had the ill fortune not to be heard, and I conceive there are some present that may very well remember and do know that Mr Newton did not send up that addition to his book till some weeks after I had read and showed the experiments and demonstration thereof in this place and had answered the reproachful letter of Dr Wallis from Oxford. However I am well pleased to find that the truth will at length prevail when men have laid aside their prepossessions and prejudices. And as that hath found approvers in the world and those thinking men too, so I doubt not but that divers other discoveries which I have here first made ( when they come to be well considered and examined ) be found not so unreasonable or extravagant as some would willingly make them.

... lean, bent and ugly man ...

References ( show )

• R S Westfall, Biography in Dictionary of Scientific Biography ( New York 1970 - 1990) . See THIS LINK .
• Biography in Encyclopaedia Britannica. http://www.britannica.com/biography/Robert-Hooke
• V I Arnol'd, Huygens and Barrow, Newton and Hooke. Pioneers in mathematical analysis and catastrophe theory from evolvents to quasicrystals ( Basel, 1990) .
• A N Bogolyubov, Robert Hooke 1635 - 1703 , Scientific-Biographic Literature 'Nauka' ( Moscow, 1984) .
• F F Centore, Robert Hooke's contributions to mechanics : a study in seventeenth century natural philosophy ( The Hague, 1970) .
• J G Crowther, Founders of British science : John Wilkins, Robert Boyle, John Ray, Christopher Wren, Robert Hooke, Isaac Newton ( London, 1960) .
• W Derham ( ed. ) , The Philosophical Works of Dr Robert Hooke ( London, 1726) .
• M Espinasse, Robert Hooke ( London, 1956) .
• M Hunter and S Schaffer ( eds. ) , Robert Hooke : new studies ( Eoodbridge, 1989) .
• R Nichols, The Diaries of Robert Hooke, The Leonardo of London, 1635 - 1703 ( Lewes, 1994) .
• R Waller ( ed. ) , The Postumous Works of Dr Robert Hooke ( London, 1705) .
• E N da C Andrade, Robert Hooke, Proc. Roy. Soc. London 201 A (1950) , 439 - 473 .
• J A Bennett, Robert Hooke as Mechanic and Natural Philosopher, Notes and Records of the Royal Society 35 (1980 - 1981) , 33 - 48 .
• J A Bennett, Hooke and Wren and the system of the world : some points towards an historical account, British J. Hist. Sci. 8 (1975) , 32 - 61 .
• A N Bogolyubov, Robert Hooke as a teacher of mathematics ( Russian ) , Istor.-Mat. Issled. 32 - 33 (1990) , 373 - 383 .
• C Dilworth, Boyle, Hooke and Newton : some aspects of scientific collaboration, Rend. Accad. Naz. Sci. XL Mem. Sci. Fis. Natur. (5) 9 (1985) , 329 - 331 .
• W N Edwards, Robert Hooke as a geologist and evolutionist, Nature 137 (1936) , 96 - 97 .
• M E Ehrlich, Mechanism and Activity in the Scientific Revolution : The Case of Robert Hooke, Annals of Science 52 (1995) , 127 - 152 .
• H Erlichson, Newton and Hooke on centripetal force motion, Centaurus 35 (1) (1992) , 46 - 63 .
• S R Filonovich, Astronomy in the work of Robert Hooke ( on the occasion of the 350 th anniversary of his birth ) ( Russian ) , Istor.-Astronom. Issled. 18 (1986) , 259 - 290 .
• O Gal, Producing knowledge in the workshop : Hooke's 'inflection' from optics to planetary motion, Stud. Hist. Philos. Sci. 27 (2) (1996) , 181 - 205 .
• D C Goodman, Robert Hooke, 1635 - 1703 , in Late seventeenth century scientists ( Oxford, 1969) , 132 - 157 .
• P Gouk, The Role of Acoustics and Music Theory in the Scientific Work of Robert Hooke, Annals of Science 37 (1980) , 573 - 605 .
• A R Hall, Robert Hooke and horology, Notes and Records Roy. Soc. London 8 (1) (1950 - 51) , 167 - 177 .
• A R Hall, Beyond the fringe : diffraction as seen by Grimaldi, Fabri, Hooke and Newton, Notes and Records Roy. Soc. London 44 (1) (1990) , 13 - 23 .
• A R Hall, Two unpublished lectures of Robert Hooke, Isis 42 (1951) , 219 - 230 .
• A R Hall, Horology and criticism : Robert Hooke, in Studia Copernicana 16 - Science and history ( Ossolinskich, 1978) , 261 - 281 .
• M Hesse, Hooke's philosophical algebra, Isis 57 (1966) , 67 - 83 .
• M Hesse, Hooke's vibration theory and the isochrony of springs, Isis 57 (1966) , 433 - 441 .
• P E B Jourdain, Robert Hooke as a precursor of Newton, Monist 23 (1913) , 353 - 385 .
• J C Kassler and D R Oldroyd, Robert Hooke's Trinity College 'Musick Scripts', his music theory and the role of music in his cosmology, Ann. of Sci. 40 (6) (1983) , 559 - 595 .
• V S Kirsanov, The correspondence between Isaac Newton and Robert Hooke : 1679 - 80 ( Russian ) , Voprosy Istor. Estestvoznan. i Tekhn. (4) (1996) , 3 - 39 , 173 .
• A Koyré, A note on Robert Hooke, Isis 41 (1950) , 195 - 196 .
• A Koyré, An unpublished letter of Robert Hooke to Isaac Newton, Isis 43 (1952) , 312 - 337 .
• R Lehti, Newton's road to classical dynamics. II. Robert Hooke's influence on Newton's dynamics ( Finnish ) , Arkhimedes 39 (1) (1987) , 18 - 51 .
• J Lohne, Hooke versus Newton : An analysis of the documents in the case on free fall and planetary motion, Centaurus 7 (1960) , 6 - 52 .
• W S Middleton, The Medical Aspect of Robert Hooke, Annals of Medical History 9 (1927) , 227 - 43 .
• H Nakajima, Two kinds of modification theory of light : some new observations on the Newton-Hooke controversy of 1672 concerning the nature of light, Ann. of Sci. 41 (3) (1984) 261 - 278 .
• M Nauenberg, Hooke, orbital dynamics and Newton's Principia, American Journal of Physics 62 (1994) , 331 - 350 .
• L D Patterson, Hooke's gravitation theory and its influence on Newton I, Isis 40 (1949) , 327 - 341 .
• L D Patterson, Hooke's gravitation theory and its influence on Newton II, Isis 41 (1950) , 23 - 45 .
• A P Rossiter, The first English geologist, Durham University Journal 27 (1935) , 172 - 181 .
• E G R Taylor, Robert Hooke and the Cartographical Projects of the Late Seventeenth Century, Geographical Journal 9 (1937) , 529 - 540 .
• R S Westfall, Hooke and the law of universal gravitation, British J. Hist. Sci. 3 (1967) , 245 - 261 .
• R S Westfall, The development of Newton's theory of colour, Isis 53 (1962) , 339 - 358 .

Additional Resources ( show )

Other pages about Robert Hooke:

• Aubrey's Brief Lives
• Multiple entries in The Mathematical Gazetteer of the British Isles ,
• Astronomy: The Dynamics of the Solar System

Other websites about Robert Hooke:

• Dictionary of Scientific Biography
• Dictionary of National Biography
• Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Robert Hooke home page
• The Galileo Project,
• Sci Hi blog
• Robert Hooke's London
• Mathematical Genealogy Project
• zbMATH entry

Honours ( show )

Honours awarded to Robert Hooke

• Fellow of the Royal Society 1663
• Lunar features Crater Hooke
• Biography in Aubrey's Brief Lives
• Lunar features Crater Hooke on Mars
• Popular biographies list Number 42

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Robert Hooke: The ‘English Leonardo’ who was a 17th-century scientific superstar

Chancellor's Professor of Medicine, Liberal Arts, and Philanthropy, Indiana University

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Considering his accomplishments, it’s a surprise that Robert Hooke isn’t more renowned. As a physician, I especially esteem him as the person who identified biology’s most essential unit, the cell.

Like Leonardo da Vinci , Hooke excelled in an incredible array of fields. The remarkable range of his achievements throughout the 1600s encompassed pneumatics, microscopy, mechanics, astronomy and even civil engineering and architecture. Yet this “ English Leonardo ” – well-known in his time – slipped into relative obscurity for several centuries.

His life and times

Hooke’s life is a rags-to-riches tale. Born in 1635, he was educated at home by his clergyman father. Orphaned at 13 with a meager inheritance, Hooke’s artistic talents landed him scholarships to Westminster School and later Oxford University. There he formed relationships with a variety of important people, most notably Robert Boyle . Hooke became the laboratory assistant of this great chemist – the formulator of Boyle’s law, which describes the inverse relation between the pressure and volume of gases.

Unlike his associates, Hooke was not a man of independent means, and he soon took a paying position as “curator of experiments” at the newly formed Royal Society , making him England’s first salaried scientific researcher. Hooke soon became a fellow of the Royal Society and was appointed to a professorship at Gresham College.

Never marrying, he dwelt the rest of his life in rooms near the Royal Society’s meeting place. This placed him at the epicenter of one of the most important epochs in the history of science, epitomized by the publication of Isaac Newton’s “ Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy .”

Experiments and innovations

For millennia before Hooke, people had regarded air, along with fire, water and earth, as one of the four elemental substances that filled the world, leaving no empty spaces. Working with Boyle, Hooke developed a vacuum pump that could empty space. In a vessel so evacuated, a candle couldn’t burn, and a clapping bell was silent, proving that air is necessary for combustion and conducting sound.

Moreover, Hooke showed that air could be expanded and compressed. He also performed foundational experiments on the relationship between air and the process of respiration in living organisms. And he laid the groundwork for thermodynamics, by suggesting that particles in matter move faster as they heat up.

Hooke’s most famous work is his beautifully illustrated “ Micrographia ,” published in 1665. The microscope had been invented 30 years before his birth. Hooke vaulted the technology forward, using an oil lamp as a light source and a water lens to focus its beams in order to enhance visualization.

He showed that the realm of the very small is as rich and complex and the one that meets the naked eye. Inspecting the structure of cork through his instrument, he named the units he saw cells, after the rooms of monks. Biologists now know that a human body contains approximately 40 trillion of them. From his microscope work, Hooke also developed a wave theory of light.

Hooke pondered some of the biggest biological questions as well. He hypothesized that the presence of fossilized fish in mountainous areas meant they had once been under water. His study of fossils led him to conclude that the Earth has been inhabited by many extinct species.

Hooke’s experiments with mechanical springs led to the formulation of Hooke’s Law , which states that the tension or compression of a spring is proportional to the force applied to it. Physicists now know that this law applies not only to springs but also to a variety of solid elastic bodies, such as manometers, which are used to measure pressure.

These same investigations also enabled him to invent the spring-powered balance watch , which would become a favorite means of keeping time for centuries. Hooke foresaw that with a precise timepiece, oceangoing sailors could find their longitude.

As an astronomer , Hooke suggested that the planet Jupiter rotates, described the center of gravity of the Earth and Moon, illustrated lunar craters and speculated on their origin, discovered a double star and illustrated the Pleiades star cluster.

At a more theoretical level, Hooke also described gravity as the force that pulls celestial bodies together, relating in a 1679 letter to Newton a version of the inverse-square law of gravitational force. When seven years later Newton published his great work “Mathematical Principles,” Hooke concluded incorrectly that Newton – who had already been at work on it at the time of their correspondence – had slighted him.

Contributions to his city

The great fire of London in 1666 presented another opportunity for Hooke to shine. Unlike many contemporaries, he refused to profit dishonestly in the aftermath of the disaster by taking bribes as people worked to rebuild. As surveyor of the city , he collaborated with the renowned architect Christopher Wren to create a monument to the fire .

He also designed a number of great buildings , including Bethlem Hospital (known as Bedlam), the Royal Greenwich Observatory and the Royal College of Physicians. It was in large part through his architectural work that Hooke made his fortune, though he never veered from the frugal habits he developed early in life. Hooke even proposed recreating London’s streets on a grid pattern. Though unsuccessful, his idea was subsequently incorporated in cities such as Liverpool and Washington, D.C.

Surveying the range and depth of Hooke’s contributions, it’s difficult to believe that one person could have accomplished so much in 67 years. Unfortunately, his sometimes rancorous disputes with the likes of Newton over scientific priority contributed to his comparative neglect by science historians , and today we lack any contemporary likeness of him. His birthday is a good time to give him his due as one of the world’s all-time great instrument makers, experimentalists and polymaths.

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. . . I could exceedingly plainly perceive it to be all perforated and porous, much like a Honey-comb, but that the pores of it were not regular. . . . these pores, or cells, . . . were indeed the first microscopical pores I ever saw, and perhaps, that were ever seen, for I had not met with any Writer or Person, that had made any mention of them before this. . .

this petrify'd Wood having lain in some place where it was well soak'd with petrifying water (that is, such water as is well impregnated with stony and earthy particles) did by degrees separate abundance of stony particles from the permeating water, which stony particles, being by means of the fluid vehicle convey'd, not onely into the Microscopical pores. . . but also into the pores or Interstitia. . . of that part of the Wood, which through the Microscope, appears most solid. . .

December 1, 1954

Robert Hooke

This 17th-century Englishman was a prodigious scientist and inventor. To mention a few of his achievements, he made basic contributions to physics, chemistry, meteorology, geology, biology and astronomy

By E. N. da C. Andrade

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Bubonic plague: bacterial disease carried by fleas of infected Old English rats. At its worst, it killed two million people a year. Those that caught the disease had a 90% chance of dying from it.

Great Plague of London: there have been several large outbreaks of the bubonic plague in Europe beginning in 1347. In 1665 London fell victim to the plague that has since been called the Great Plague of London...  more

Microscope: an instrument used to see objects or parts of objects, which are too small to be seen with only our eyes...  more

Robert Hooke (28 July 1635 – 3 March 1703)

The cover of Robert Hooke's Micrographia , published in 1665. In addition to illustrations of insects, snowflakes, and his famous slice of cork, he also described how to make a microscope like the one he used.

The year was 1665. A book of illustrations called Micrographia has just been published by the English natural philosopher, Robert Hooke. The camera had not yet been invented so illustrations were common for books and other publications. What was uncommon about Micrographia was that it was one of the first time drawings of the microscopic world had been published.

Within the publication more than 30 detailed illustrations appeared including the famous one from cork that provided the first documentation of a single cell. Hooke also examined hair under a microscope and made a note that some of the hairs were split at the ends. This is possibly the first notation of split ends.

Examples of Hooke's detailed drawings can be seen in the illustration of a cork and a flea below. It was in his description of cork that he first used the term "cell" even though he did not know how important his discovery would become. The cell wasn't really understood until 1839 when scientists began to discover its importance.

Why Call it a Cell?

Hooke's drawings show the detailed shape and structure of a thinly sliced piece of cork. When it came time to name these chambers he used the word 'cell' to describe them, because they reminded him of the bare wall rooms where monks lived. These rooms were called cells.

Gallery of Images from Micrographia

There were no cameras when Robert Hooke first explored the tiny world with his microscope. To bring these images to life and share them with the world, he had to draw what he saw using his new instrument. Here are a few of the amazing drawings he made and published in 1665.

Additional places to explore:

Read Micrographia and view all the images at eBooks@Adelaide .

References:

Historical Anatomies on the Web (NIH).

Scanning Electron Image of the flea from the Center for Disease Control (CDC)

Image of the scanning electron microscope snowflake from Beltsville Electron Microscopy Unit, part of the USDA .

Additional images from Wikimedia Commons.

Read more about: Building Blocks of Life

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• Article: Robert Hooke
• Author(s): Shyamala Iyer
• Publisher: Arizona State University School of Life Sciences Ask A Biologist
• Site name: ASU - Ask A Biologist
• Date published: September 24, 2009
• Date accessed: May 21, 2024
• Link: https://askabiologist.asu.edu/robert-hooke

Shyamala Iyer. (2009, September 24). Robert Hooke. ASU - Ask A Biologist. Retrieved May 21, 2024 from https://askabiologist.asu.edu/robert-hooke

Chicago Manual of Style

Shyamala Iyer. "Robert Hooke". ASU - Ask A Biologist. 24 September, 2009. https://askabiologist.asu.edu/robert-hooke

MLA 2017 Style

Shyamala Iyer. "Robert Hooke". ASU - Ask A Biologist. 24 Sep 2009. ASU - Ask A Biologist, Web. 21 May 2024. https://askabiologist.asu.edu/robert-hooke

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The Forgotten Genius: The Biography of Robert Hooke 1635–1703

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Peter Dear; The Forgotten Genius: The Biography of Robert Hooke 1635–1703 . Physics Today 1 February 2005; 58 (2): 66–68. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.2405556

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The Forgotten Genius: The Biography of Robert Hooke 1635–1703 , Stephen   Inwood   MacAdam/Cage , San Francisco , 2003 . $28.50 ( 482 pp.). ISBN 1-931561-56-7 Google Scholar  

Robert Hooke has never really been forgotten. But he is usually remembered only as a peripheral figure of the scientific revolution, famous for his controversies with the great Isaac Newton or, especially in Great Britain, for being a minor colleague of Christopher Wren, the architect of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London who also rebuilt the city after the great fire of 1666. The Curious Life of Robert Hooke: The Man Who Measured London by Lisa Jardine and The Forgotten Genius: The Biography of Robert Hooke 1635–1703 by Stephen Inwood are both biographies by British authors, and Jardine’s book in particular reminds us of Hooke’s major, albeit overshadowed, role in that astonishing rebuilding effort. He would have been much better remembered had he received the kind of hagiographical treatment after his death that so benefited Wren.

Hooke was a founding member of the Royal Society when it received its final royal authorization in 1663. He was its lifeblood for many years, the one who made it much more than just a talking shop. He was appointed the society’s first “curator of experiments,” charged with producing experimental demonstrations for the group’s discussions at each weekly meeting. Hooke received the post after being Robert Boyle’s experimental technician in Oxford for several years; he built Boyle’s air pumps and probably was responsible for the initial formulation of Boyle’s law. (Hooke’s law, of course, is itself well known to engineers and physicists.)

Hooke published on many topics and left a large collection of manuscripts on many others, including geology, astronomy, watchmaking, gravity, chemistry, mechanics, and microscopy. His interest in microscopy in particular produced his greatest lasting legacy: Micrographia, or Some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies made by Magnifying Glasses of 1665. That book is perhaps best known for its huge fold-out engraving of a magnified flea, an image that is frequently reproduced without attribution. The magnificent illustrations, some perhaps due to Hooke’s friend and colleague Wren, ensured the book’s success. It was the book’s textual contents, however, that laid the foundation for Hooke’s contemporary reputation. His discussion of the nature of light and color caught the attention of the young Newton—Hooke first described “Newton’s rings” in Micrographia —and set the stage for the controversy between him and Newton in the 1670s after Newton published his own ideas on the same subject.

Readers interested in learning more about Hooke and this controversy with Newton, and about Micrographia , may be disappointed by Jardine’s book. Jardine evidently intended that her book join the ranks of the countless “The Man Who …” books whose many subjects “changed the world,” following the example of the 1995 biography Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time (Walker, 1995) by Dava Sobel. Although Jardine begins with a theme-setting account of Hooke’s battle for credit when Newton’s Principia was published, her narrative provides no discussion of the optical controversy between the two men and, more surprisingly, no real discussion of Micrographia and its contents. Inwood’s The Forgotten Genius , on the other hand, dedicates several pages to each of the famous controversies and an entire chapter (although of modest length) to the Micrographia. His book discusses many of Hooke’s scientific and technical innovations, including all of the major ones, whereas Jardine often mentions them only in passing.

The focus of Jardine’s book is on Hooke as a social being who moves around London consorting with people of many different sorts and social classes, from lords to laborers. Even before his intensive work on the surveying and rebuilding of London after the fire, Hooke appears in a variety of settings, from bookshops to the court of Charles II. He is most typically seen in coffeehouses, a new feature of London life in the 1660s that Hooke took to like a duck to water, where he could meet with Royal Society colleagues, mathematical instrument makers, and sailors. His technical and intellectual capacities, combined with his social skills, recommended him to the City of London as a practical surveyor. The appointment, together with his work for Wren’s architectural firm, made him the single most significant figure in the grand project for rebuilding London, an enterprise whose swiftness amazed foreign visitors. It is in Jardine’s accounts of this period of Hooke’s life, rather than in her accounts of his scientific labors, that Hooke really comes alive.

A feature that recommends Hooke to biographers is the existence of his famous diaries, which both Jardine and Inwood use well. The diaries sketch out the business of Hooke’s everyday life, the breadth of his social acquaintance, and the details of his domestic existence. Jardine and Inwood both discuss his constant concerns with his health and with medical remedies, few of which seemed to have done much good. The diaries are also the source for what historians know about his sex life, without which no biography is nowadays complete.

Jardine’s book is lavishly illustrated and is more appealing to the eye. Inwood’s, by contrast, is comfortable and old-fashioned and takes its biographical task seriously, proceeding largely chronologically and trying not to leave out important events in the course of Hooke’s life. Jardine attempts more vigorously to develop themes, such as the long-lasting importance of Hooke’s childhood in the Isle of Wight. His early years on the island seem to have shaped his later geological ideas and provided social connections (including sources of servants) that continued to be important to him until the end.

Anyone seriously interested in Hooke has, in addition to Jardine’s and Inwood’s books, plenty of specialized scholarly work available. The layperson who wants to learn something about Hooke’s tremendously inventive scientific career would do well to start with Inwood, whereas the reader who is interested in the social and cultural life of later 17th-century London will profit much from Jardine’s colorful and insightful book.

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History of the Cell: Discovering the Cell

Initially discovered by Robert Hooke in 1665, the cell has a rich and interesting history that has ultimately given way to many of today’s scientific advancements.

Biology, Genetics

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Although they are externally very different, internally, an elephant, a sunflower, and an amoeba are all made of the same building blocks. From the single cells that make up the most basic organisms to the trillions of cells that constitute the complex structure of the human body, each and every living being on Earth is comprised of cells . This idea, part of the cell theory, is one of the central tenants of biology . Cell theory also states that cells are the basic functional unit of living organisms and that all cells come from other cells . Although this knowledge is foundational today, scientists did not always know about cells .

The discovery of the cell would not have been possible if not for advancements to the microscope . Interested in learning more about the microscopic world, scientist Robert Hooke improved the design of the existing compound microscope in 1665. His microscope used three lenses and a stage light, which illuminated and enlarged the specimens. These advancements allowed Hooke to see something wondrous when he placed a piece of cork under the microscope . Hooke detailed his observations of this tiny and previously unseen world in his book, Micrographia . To him, the cork looked as if it was made of tiny pores, which he came to call “cells” because they reminded him of the cells in a monastery.

In observing the cork’s cells, Hooke noted in Micrographia that, “I could exceedingly plainly perceive it to be all perforated and porous, much like a Honey-comb, but that the pores of it were not regular… these pores, or cells,…were indeed the first microscopical pores I ever saw, and perhaps, that were ever seen, for I had not met with any Writer or Person, that had made any mention of them before this…”

Not long after Hooke’s discovery, Dutch scientist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek detected other hidden, minuscule organisms— bacteria and protozoa . It was unsurprising that van Leeuwenhoek would make such a discovery. He was a master microscope maker and perfected the design of the simple microscope (which only had a single lens), enabling it to magnify an object by around two hundred to three hundred times its original size. What van Leeuwenhoek saw with these microscopes was bacteria and protozoa , but he called these tiny creatures “animalcules.”

Van Leeuwenhoek became fascinated. He went on to be the first to observe and describe spermatozoa in 1677. He even took a look at the plaque between his teeth under the microscope. In a letter to the Royal Society, he wrote, "I then most always saw, with great wonder, that in the said matter there were many very little living animalcules, very prettily a-moving.”

In the nineteenth century, biologists began taking a closer look at both animal and plant tissues, perfecting cell theory. Scientists could readily tell that plants were completely made up of cells due to their cell wall. However, this was not so obvious for animal cells, which lack a cell wall. Many scientists believed that animals were made of “globules.”

German scientists Theodore Schwann and Mattias Schleiden studied cells of animals and plants respectively. These scientists identified key differences between the two cell types and put forth the idea that cells were the fundamental units of both plants and animals.

However, Schwann and Schleiden misunderstood how cells grow. Schleiden believed that cells were “seeded” by the nucleus and grew from there. Similarly, Schwann claimed that animal cells “crystalized” from the material between other cells. Eventually, other scientists began to uncover the truth. Another piece of the cell theory puzzle was identified by Rudolf Virchow in 1855, who stated that all cells are generated by existing cells.

At the turn of the century, attention began to shift toward cytogenetics, which aimed to link the study of cells to the study of genetics. In the 1880s, Walter Sutton and Theodor Boveri were responsible for identifying the chromosome as the hub for heredity —forever linking genetics and cytology. Later discoveries further confirmed and solidified the role of the cell in heredity , such as James Watson and Francis Crick’s studies on the structure of DNA .

The discovery of the cell continued to impact science one hundred years later, with the discovery of stem cells , the undifferentiated cells that have yet to develop into more specialized cells . Scientists began deriving embryonic stem cells from mice in the 1980s, and in 1998, James Thomson isolated human embryonic stem cells and developed cell lines. His work was then published in an article in the journal Science . It was later discovered that adult tissues, usually skin, could be reprogrammed into stem cells and then form other cell types. These cells are known as induced pluripotent stem cells . Stem cells are now used to treat many conditions such as Alzheimer’s and heart disease.

The discovery of the cell has had a far greater impact on science than Hooke could have ever dreamed in 1665. In addition to giving us a fundamental understanding of the building blocks of all living organisms, the discovery of the cell has led to advances in medical technology and treatment. Today, scientists are working on personalized medicine, which would allow us to grow stem cells from our very own cells and then use them to understand disease processes. All of this and more grew from a single observation of the cell in a cork.

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Hooke, Robert

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• Ellen Tan Drake  

Born   Freshwater, Isle of Wight, England, 18 July 1635

Died   London, England, 3 March 1703

Robert Hooke was one of the foremost experimenters of the 17th century and a remarkable inventor of astronomical instruments. He was among the first to suggest the inverse‐square law of gravitation and the periodicity of comets.

Hooke was the son of John Hooke, curate of All Saints Church in Freshwater, and his second wife Cicely Giles. A sickly child, he was not expected to survive childhood.

At a young age Hooke showed artistic and mechanical talent; he could draw and paint and build wooden models of machines that worked. When he was 13, his father died, and Hooke was sent to London to be apprenticed to the portrait painter Sir Peter Lely, but the odor of the oil paint made him sick. He was then sent to Westminster School. The headmaster, Dr. Busby, immediately recognized the boy's genius when Hooke learned the first six books of Euclid in a week, taught himself to play the organ, and learned...

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Selected References

Bennett, J. A. et al. (2003). London's Leonardo: The Life and Work of Robert Hooke . Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Espinasse, Margaret (1962). Robert Hooke . Berkeley: University of California Press.

Jardine, Lisa (2004). The Curious Life of Robert Hooke: The Man Who Measured London . New York: HarperCollins.

Tan Drake, Ellen (1996). Restless Genius: Robert Hooke and His Earthly Thoughts . New York: Oxford University Press.

Westfall, Richard S. (1967). “Hooke and the Law of Universal Gravitation: A Reappraisal of a Reappraisal.” British Journal for the History of Science 3: 245–261.

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Department of Earth Science, University of Northern Iowa, Office: Latham 112, 50614, Cedar Falls, IA, USA

Thomas Hockey ( Professor of Astronomy ) ( Professor of Astronomy )

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Drake, E. (2007). Hooke, Robert. In: Hockey, T., et al. The Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30400-7_646

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1 The Life of Robert Hooke

• Published: July 1996
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The intellectual biography of Robert Hooke should he written by a committee of experts-a large committee. Hooke has done so much and contributed to so many fields of human endeavor that no single author could possibly do him justice. Besides Richard Waller’s 1705 summary of Hooke’s life in The Posthumous Works, the best biographies remain those of Margaret ‘Espinasse and E. N. da C. Andrade, dating to the 1950s. Gunther’s multivolume chronicle of Hooke’s life and work is an invaluable source. Yet even these excellent accounts can only touch upon certain aspects in his life while emphasizing others. And of course, the publication of Hooke’s diary in 1935 has illuminated both his personality and facts in his life.1 Many articles dealing with individual points in Hooke’s life have been written over the last 40 years. When a team of scholars led by Michael Hunter and Simon Schaffer (1989) recently convened for a much needed symposium on Hooke, what came forth, albeit of distinct value, was a collection of articles on some specific but disjointed aspects of Hooke’s life and work. Although it was not the goal of this symposium to represent Hooke in one conference and volume, their effort, with its broad range of topics, demonstrates the difficulty or impossibility of such a task.

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• Books & Arts
• Published: 22 May 2003

Hooke, life and thinker

• David R. Oldroyd 1  

Nature volume  423 ,  pages 384–385 ( 2003 ) Cite this article

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London's Leonardo: The Life and Work of Robert Hooke

• Jim Bennett,
• Michael Cooper,
• Michael Hunter &
• Lisa Jardine

Some devotees of Robert Hooke have regarded him as Britain's greatest scientific genius of the seventeenth century, the range of his interests and achievements being hard to conceive. He is a fruitful subject for historical enquiry as he left behind him a large archival trail, and, with his polymathic interests, he has attracted much attention. A good general overview, Robert Hooke by Margaret 'Espinasse (Heinemann), was published in 1956. Since then, studies of Hooke have expanded greatly to the point where we have a detailed knowledge of the man, although not all within the pages of a single volume. London's Leonardo contains four highly competent and complementary essays, which go a long way towards providing a definitive account of Hooke, while leaving open the road (or preparing the way) for a full intellectual biography.

Hooke was wealthy at his death, much of his money having come from his work helping to resurvey London after the Great Fire of 1666. In his essay, Michael Cooper describes this work pleasantly and informatively. That Hooke should have embarked on it when he was already fully occupied with his scientific work for the Royal Society is remarkable and bespeaks his devotion to London and its inhabitants. There were many problems. With street widening, residents had to be compensated fairly for the land they were to lose. Buildings had different owners on different floors, and some structures had 'interleaved' with their neighbours. An accurate survey was needed, and it relied on instruments, some devised by Hooke, that were an integral part of the 'scientific revolution'. Hooke's contributions to the survey were substantial.

Jim Bennett's fine paper, which is profusely illustrated, deals with Hooke's instruments and inventions more generally, revealing their extraordinary range and ingenuity: time-pieces, air pumps, telescopes and microscopes, meteorological and oceanographic instruments, the universal joint and many other items. Hooke believed in the use of instruments to enhance the senses, as can be seen from his controversy with the Polish astronomer Johannes Hevelius, who still advocated naked-eye instruments for astronomy. Hooke was clearly on the winning side. Everyone knew that optical instruments had imperfections, and Hooke applied himself to the endless task of their improvement.

Michael Hunter writes about Hooke's philosophy of nature and his ideas on scientific method. Regarding the latter, Hooke was not a baconian inductivist (nor, indeed, was Bacon), but rather a hypothetico-deductivist. Although Hooke made some use of baconian tables of 'presence', 'absence' and 'degrees', he gave a clear example of the formulation and testing of hypotheses in science. He proposed the idea of pole-wandering to account for cyclical interchanges of the levels of land and sea (to explain the presence of inland fossils). Such movements in the position of the geographic poles, if they occurred, would, over time, produce changes in the direction of the meridian at any given locality. Hooke then suggested astronomical methods for the accurate determination of the meridian, which should be measured over a period of years to look for changes. A first attempt at determination failed because of poor weather and the idea was not pursued, being pushed aside by Hooke's manifold other activities, but the hypothetico-deductive method was clearly enunciated.

This example, in a way, renders superfluous historians' worries about what Hooke meant by what he mysteriously called 'philosophical algebra', presumably some kind of 'routinizable' procedure for conducting science. Of course, knowing about the 'form' of scientific method tells us little about how Hooke's creative process worked. Hunter, unlike another Hooke aficionado, Steve Shapin, eschews discussion of the significance of Hooke's social status for his scientific practice. Rather, Hunter gives an excellent exposition of Hooke's Micrographia , which links back to the discussion of instruments, and further illustrates his procedures.

Lisa Jardine's paper is less precisely focused than the other three. She explicates details of Hooke's relations with Robert Boyle, and writes about Hooke's work on pressures, the magnitude of subterranean gravitational attraction and geology. But she is chiefly interested in his health and his self-medication (recorded in his diary), which eventually more or less killed him. Hooke left no will, and his family fell on his fortune after he died. They were not interested in preserving his name, so for many years he was a rather forgotten figure (Jardine suggests). But his time has come: the comprehensive bibliography of London's Leonardo shows just how many works have been written about him since 'Espinasse's biography.

This prompts a thought. People's interests can often be judged by their libraries. Hooke's printed library sale catalogue survived, and some years ago I attempted an approximate classification of his books. The number of literary items (languages, grammar, philology, poetry, plays, epigrams and biographical works) easily exceeded the number in any of the categories of mathematics, astronomy, logic, physics, architecture, machines and so on. Is there perhaps another Hooke to be explored: the man of letters?

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Oldroyd, D. Hooke, life and thinker. Nature 423 , 384–385 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/423384b

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1.1B: History of Microbiology - Hooke, van Leeuwenhoek, and Cohn

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• Page ID 8765

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Learning Objectives

• Explain how Van Leeuwenhoek, Spallanzani, Pasteur, Cohn and Koch contributed to the field of microbiology

Pre-microbiology, the possibility that microorganisms existed was discussed for many centuries before their actual discovery in the 17 th century. The existence of unseen microbiological life was postulated by Jainism, which is based on Mahavira’s teachings as early as 6 th century BCE. In his first century book, On Agriculture, Roman scholar Marcus Terentius Varro was the first known to suggest the possibility of disease spreading by yet unseen organisms. In his book, he warns against locating a homestead near swamps because “there are bred certain minute creatures that cannot be seen by the eyes, which float in the air and enter the body through the mouth and nose and there cause serious diseases. ” In The Canon of Medicine (1020), Abū Alī ibn Sīnā (Avicenna) hypothesized that tuberculosis and other diseases might be contagious. In 1546, Girolamo Fracastoro proposed that epidemic diseases were caused by transferable seed-like entities that could transmit infection by direct or indirect contact, or even without contact over long distances. All these early claims about the existence of microorganisms were speculative and were not based on any data or science. Microorganisms were neither proven, observed, nor correctly and accurately described until the 17 th century. The reason for this was that all these early studies lacked the microscope.

The Microscope and Discovery of Microorganisms

Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (1632–1723) was one of the first people to observe microorganisms, using a microscope of his own design, and made one of the most important contributions to biology. Robert Hooke was the first to use a microscope to observe living things. Hooke’s 1665 book, Micrographia, contained descriptions of plant cells. Before Van Leeuwenhoek’s discovery of microorganisms in 1675, it had been a mystery why grapes could be turned into wine, milk into cheese, or why food would spoil. Van Leeuwenhoek did not make the connection between these processes and microorganisms, but using a microscope, he did establish that there were forms of life that were not visible to the naked eye. Van Leeuwenhoek’s discovery, along with subsequent observations by Spallanzani and Pasteur, ended the long-held belief that life spontaneously appeared from non-living substances during the process of spoilage.

Lazzaro Spallanzani (1729–1799) found that boiling broth would sterilize it and kill any microorganisms in it. He also found that new microorganisms could settle only in a broth if the broth was exposed to the air.

Louis Pasteur (1822–1895) expanded upon Spallanzani’s findings by exposing boiled broths to the air in vessels that contained a filter to prevent all particles from passing through to the growth medium. He also did this in vessels with no filter at all, with air being admitted via a curved tube that prevented dust particles from coming in contact with the broth. By boiling the broth beforehand, Pasteur ensured that no microorganisms survived within the broths at the beginning of his experiment. Nothing grew in the broths in the course of Pasteur’s experiment. This meant that the living organisms that grew in such broths came from outside, as spores on dust, rather than spontaneously generated within the broth. Thus, Pasteur dealt the death blow to the theory of spontaneous generation and supported germ theory instead.

Ferdinand Julius Cohn (January 24, 1828 – June 25, 1898) was a German biologist. His classification of bacteria into four groups based on shape (sphericals, short rods, threads, and spirals) is still in use today. Among other things Cohn is remembered for being the first to show that Bacillus can change from a vegetative state to an endospore state when subjected to an environment deleterious to the vegetative state. His studies would lay the foundation for the classification of microbes and gave some of the first insights into the incredible complexity and diversity of microbial life.

In 1876, Robert Koch (1843–1910) established that microbes can cause disease. He found that the blood of cattle who were infected with anthrax always had large numbers of Bacillus anthracis . Koch found that he could transmit anthrax from one animal to another by taking a small sample of blood from the infected animal and injecting it into a healthy one, and this caused the healthy animal to become sick. He also found that he could grow the bacteria in a nutrient broth, then inject it into a healthy animal, and cause illness. Based on these experiments, he devised criteria for establishing a causal link between a microbe and a disease and these are now known as Koch’s postulates. Although these postulates cannot be applied in all cases, they do retain historical importance to the development of scientific thought and are still being used today.

• Van Leeuwenhoek is largely credited with the discovery of microbes, while Hooke is credited as the first scientist to describe live processes under a microscope.
• Spallanzani and Pasteur performed several experiments to demonstrate that microbial life does not arise spontaneously.
• Cohn laid the groundwork for discovering and cataloging microbes, while Koch conclusively showed that microbes can cause diseases.
• classification : the act of forming into a class or classes; a distribution into groups, as classes, orders, families, etc., according to some common relations or attributes.