Richard Nichols,
The Diaries of Robert Hooke, The Leonardo of London, 1635-1703
. Lewes, Sussex: The Book Guild, 1994, Pp. 185, £15.00. ISBN 0- 86332-930-6. Richard Nichols is a science master turned historian of science who celebrates in this book Robert Hooke’s contributions to the arts and sciences. The appreciation brings together comments from Hooke’s
Diaries
, and other works, on each of his main enterprises, and on his personal interaction with each of his principal friends and foes. Further references to Hooke and his activities are drawn from
Birch’s History of the Royal Society,
Aubrey’s
Brief Lives
, and the
Diaries
of Evelyn and of Pepys. The first section of the book, ‘Hooke the Man’, covers his early years of education at home in Freshwater, at Westminster school and at Christ Church, Oxford, where he soon joined the group of experimental philosophers who set him up as Curator of the Royal Society and Professor of Geometry at Gresham College, Bishopsgate. Hooke’s domestic life at Gresham College is described - his intimate relationships with a series of housekeepers, including his niece, Grace Hooke, and his social life at the College and in the London coffee houses.