Welcome to the most dramatic scientific fight of the 17th century! Let’s imagine “Game of Thrones” but with telescopes, powdered wigs and mathematical equations. In one corner we have Sir Isaac Newton (1643-1727) and in the other Robert Hooke (1635-1703).
Newton was a brilliant scientist, but with the social skills of a stone. He spent his days locked in his room in Cambridge experimenting with light, inventing mathematical calculations, and occasionally sticking needles in his eye. All for “science.”
For his part, Hooke was the “one-man band” of British wisdom: curator of experiments at the Royal Society, architect, inventor and microscopist. If there was something to discover Hooke wanted to be the first to do it. It was so versatile that it probably would have invented the smartphone in the 17th century if it had the right components.
The letter that opened the spigot
It all began in 1674 when Hooke published his ideas on gravitation in “An Attempt to Prove the Motion of the Earth.” There he proposed that the planets moved by an attraction that decreased with distance squared. Newton, meanwhile, was in his favorite corner of Cambridge, probably nibbling on an apple and thinking, “Interesting, but do you have the math to prove it, mate?”
In 1679, Hooke – being the new Secretary of the Royal Society – decided to write to Newton. The letter said something like this: “Dear Isaac, what do you think of my theory about planetary motion? By the way, could you help me prove it mathematically? Newton, as expected, shipped it with untempered boxes.
Just eight years later Newton published his masterpiece: “Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy” or, simply, “Principia.” In it he had not only fully developed the theory of universal gravitation, but he was also careful not to mention Hooke even once.
It was then that Robert Hooke began to shout from the rooftops that Newton had plagiarized his ideas. Newton, for his part, responded with the scientific equivalent of “Do you have proof?” No, right? Well that’s it.
Newton’s famous line “If I have seen further it is because I sit on the shoulders of giants” was actually a subtle cheap shot at Hooke, who was notoriously short and hunchbacked to boot.
posthumous revenge
When Hooke died in 1703 Newton, by then president of the Royal Society, not only did not attend the funeral, but embarked on a smear campaign to remove any visual trace of Hooke from history. Furthermore, he mysteriously destroyed or “lost” the only known portrait of Hooke.
The irony of this whole dispute is that they were both right… at least to some extent. Hooke had correctly intuited the inverse square law, but Newton was the one who really developed the complete mathematics and demonstrated how it worked throughout the universe. It’s like when two chefs argue over a recipe: one has the general idea of the ingredients, but the other writes the entire cookbook with exact measurements, temperatures, and cooking times.
Mockingly, history has been fairer than Newton. Although Hooke did not get the credit he deserved at the time, today he is recognized as one of the most important experimental scientists in history. His law – Hooke’s Law of elasticity – is mandatory for all physics students to analyze and study. Furthermore, his work with microscopes revolutionized our understanding of the wonderful world that was hidden before our eyes.
#battle #gravity #shook #science #Newton #Hooke
