Bodleian treasures: Robert Hooke’s Micrographia

Robert Hooke (1635-1703) has been called the single greatest experimental scientist of the 17th century.

His interests included physics, astronomy, chemistry, biology and geology, and he was part of the group which formed the Royal Society – the world’s oldest scientific think tank. Hooke’s law, an equation to describe elasticity, was published in 1678.

Hooke’s reputation as a biologist rests on his book Micrographia, which was published in 1665. His invention of the compound microscope allowed him to observe a range of organisms, some of which are illustrated in the publication.

Channel 4 News Science Correspondent Tom Clarke describes Micrographia as “one of the most important science books ever published” because it introduced the world to “the new universe of the microscopic”. Hooke was showing people things they had never seen before.

Robert Hooke's description of a flea

"But, as for the beauty of it, the Microscope manifests it to be all over adorn'd with a curiously polish'd suit of sable Armour, neatly jointed, and beset with multitudes of sharp pinns, shap'd almost like Porcupine's Quills, or bright conical Steel-bodkins; the head is on either side beautify'd with a quick and round black eye K, behind each of which also appears a small cavity, L, in which he seems to move to and fro a certain thin film beset with many small transparent hairs, which probably may be his ears."

Just as importantly, Hooke uses the book to advocate a new way of doing science, through careful observation and then the recording of what has been observed – which became a tenet of scientific practice.

Micrographia became the ultimate coffee table book of its time. Several of its illustrations fold out to present images that are bigger than the actual dimensions of the book.

The publication amazed Hooke’s contemporaries. The diarist Samuel Pepys called it “the most ingenious book that I ever read in my life”. It includes drawings of a louse, a gnat and a flea (see illustration below).

The book in the Bodleian was once owned by Martin Lister, a friend of Robert Hooke. Lister donated the book to Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum. The book was given to the Bodleian in the 19th century.