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Robert Hooke

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The church at Willen, Milton Keynes

Robert Hooke was an important architect. He was the official London Surveyor after the Great Fire of 1666, surveying about half the plots in the city. As well as the Bethlem Royal Hospital, other buildings designed by Hooke include: The Royal College of Physicians (1679); Ragley Hall in Warwickshire; and the parish church at Willen, Milton Keynes (historical Buckinghamshire).

Hooke's collaboration with Christopher Wren was particularly fruitful and yielded The Royal Observatory at Greenwich, The Monument (to the Great Fire) and St Paul's Cathedral, whose dome uses a method of construction conceived by Hooke.

In the reconstruction after the Great Fire, Hooke proposed redesigning London's streets on a grid pattern with wide boulevards and arteries along the lines of the Champs-Élysées, (this pattern was subsequently used for Liverpool and many American cities), but was prevented by problems over property rights. Many property owners were surreptitiously shifting their boundaries and disputes were rife. (Hooke was in demand to use his competence as a surveyor and tact as an arbitrator to settle many of these disputes.) So London was rebuilt along the original mediaeval streets. It is interesting to note that much of the modern-day curse of congestion in London has its origin in these petty disputes of the 17th century.

Books

  • The Man Who Knew Too Much about people Stephen Inwood, Pan Books, 2002. ISBN 0-330-48829-5. (Published in the USA as The Forgotten Genius)
  • Early Science in Oxford vol vii, Dr. R. T. Gunther, ed., privately printed, 1923-67.
  • Robert Hooke, Margaret 'Espinasse. William Heinemann Ltd, 1956.
  • The Curious Life of Robert Hooke: The Man who Measured London, Lisa Jardine. Harper Collins Publishers, 2003. ISBN 0-00-714944-1.
  • London's Leonardo: The Life and Work of Robert Hooke, Jim Bennett, Michael Cooper, Michael Hunter and Lisa Jardine. Oxford University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-19-852579-6.
  • England's Leonardo: Robert Hooke and the Seventeenth-century Scientific Revolution, Allan Chapman. Institute of Physics Publishing, 2004. ISBN 0-7503-0987-3.

bodies made by magnifying glasses with observations and inquiries thereupon...]

Commemorations

The craters on the Moon and Mars were named in his honour.

See also

References

External links

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