text:
German
educator
Basel missionary
Akropong
Gold Coast
Christian ministry
vocational education
Akan peoples
Korntal
Pietist
Stuttgart, Germany
Württemberg Pietist
housekeeping
Basel Mission
Switzerland
Psalm 46
laying on of hands
London
Scripture
Moravian
Sierra Leone
New Year’s Eve
Cape Three Points
Cape Coast
Euro-African
mulatto
Christiansborg
West Indian
Twi language
Liberian
George Peter Thompson
Angolan
Moravian Jamaican
Catherine Mulgrave
Christ Presbyterian Church
original sin
repentance
redemption
salvation
life after death
heaven
fetish
Supreme Being
weaving
Mamprobi
Odwira
Asante
kente
loom
reading, writing, arithmetic
English
Christianity
Rose Ann Miller
sewing
Bible studies
Twi language
chevon
David Asante
baptism
housekeeping

categories: Women educators,1908 deaths,Gold Coast (British colony) people,1826 births,Christian missionaries in Africa,Female Christian missionaries,Heads of schools in Ghana,German Protestants,Protestant missionaries in Ghana,German missionaries,People from Ludwigsburg (district)

paragraph: Rosina Widmann

paragraph: Rosina Widmann, née Binder, (13 November 1826 – 14 November 1908) was a German educator and Basel missionary-wife who opened a girls’ school at Akropong in pre-colonial Ghana. She was the first exemplar of a European missionary-wife who worked in Ghana for a long period. Between 1847 and 1877, Widmann lived on the Gold Coast and was actively involved in both the Christian ministry and women's vocational education. Her sojourn in Akropong was in three phases: January 1847 to April 1850; December 1851 to June 1867 and January 1869 to spring 1877. Widmann was also a prolific writer, noted for her detailed diary entries of her thoughts and travels, everyday life as a missionary-wife, her interactions with her school pupils and with the Akan peoples of Akropong, providing a vivid narrative of nineteenth century European missionary activity in colonial Ghana, situated against the Akan culture.

paragraph: Section::::Early life.

paragraph: Section::::Early life.:Childhood and education.

paragraph: Rosina Binder was born on 13 November 1826 in Korntal, a then newly founded Pietist village close to Stuttgart, Germany. Some scholars have suggested that her grandparents may have been among the first settlers of Korntal. The daughter of a farmer, Rosina Binder came from a large family and had ten other siblings, including half-brothers and sisters, with whom she grew up in southern Germany where the Württemberg Pietist lifestyle was commonplace. Her mother was the second wife of her father. She had a very basic education and later enrolled at a girls’ school where she learnt sewing and housekeeping. In her records, she was described as “a simple Christian who had no higher education” but nonetheless gifted with an appreciable Biblical knowledge. It is said that in nineteenth century feudal Germany, Rosina Binder had “aspirations to rise socially but only knew ordinary cooking.”

paragraph: Section::::Early life.:Marriage proposal.

paragraph: In 1845, when Rosina Widmann was nineteen years old, she received an unusual arranged marriage proposition from the Basel Mission: a thirty-one year-old German man, Johann Georg Widmann (1814 - 1876) who had attended the Basel Mission Seminary in Basel, Switzerland and had been working on the Gold Coast as missionary for three years was looking for a life partner. Upon the recommendation of the Rev. Jakob Heinrich Staudt, the local Lutheran minister and a former lecturer at the Basel Mission Seminary, Binder had been chosen by the Basel Committee of Friends as a potential suitor for J. G. Widmann. Like all Basel missionaries, Widmann had arrived in Ghana as a bachelor and had to prove himself in the field for a minimum of two years, before permission could be granted by the Home Committee to find a suitable wife or so-called mission bride on his behalf. Due to the cost of travel, Johann Widmann could not physically go to Europe to find a bride. Though Rosina Binder had never met her future husband, she was asked to marry him and join him at the mission station in Akropong in a tropical region known for its high missionary death toll. By her own account, Johann Widmann did not even know her name. The Basel Mission Inspector, Wilhelm Hoffmann who happened to be in her hometown met Binder and found her suitable. He reported to the Home Committee that Rosina Binder would accept the proposal as soon as her grandmother gave her approval of the union, after which she would learn English and be trained in domestic skills.

paragraph: Rosina Binder accepted marriage proposal. On 17 September 1846, at her commissioning service, the Lutheran pastor, the Rev. Staudt, selected Psalm 46 with emphasis on verses 1 and 7 as her Biblical verse for blessing: "“God is our shelter and strength, always ready to help in times of trouble. The Lord Almighty is with us, the God of Jacob is our refuge.”" The pastor had wanted to bless her by laying on of hands but the church elders objected to it and the suggestion was shelved. At the time of her departure from her hometown in Germany, her mother was gravely ill after giving birth to her youngest child. She noted in her diary, “"Then I went to my beloved mother, who sat up in her bed and cried her heart out and couldn’t say more than: So you want to go now…Because of her weakness I did not speak many words and quickly rushed out of the room. Therefore, I forgot to say goodbye to my little two week-old sister, Sophie.”"

paragraph: Section::::Early life.:Voyage to London and the Gold Coast.

paragraph: On 19 September 1846, in Pietist fashion, she bade an emotional farewell to her grandmother, parents and siblings before leaving with four missionaries, Johann Dieterle, Joseph Mohr, Johannes Stanger and Friedrich Meischel who were also going to the Gold Coast. When they were about thirty minutes outside Korntal, a group of young women with whom she had started a prayer fellowship six months earlier presented her with a token of grapes as “proof of their love” for her. She entered a London-bound passenger steamship. During the voyage, she and the missionaries often sang Lutheran hymns.

paragraph: Rosina Binder was in London for nearly two months, from 23 September to 20 November 1846. During her stay in London, she wrote in her diary, "“I looked at all the strangeness, strange people, strange language and strange customs with a heavy heart. Besides, I was very afraid of the long sea voyage.”" While in the British capital, she struggled to learn the English language. The big city was strange to her as were the fashion style and Victorian version of pietism.

paragraph: She had not yet received a letter from her fiancé, Johann Widmann as normal ship connection was yet to be established and communication with the Gold Coast was spotty at best. She worried even more when she learnt that her mother’s health was deteriorating. She experienced desolation “illness and a spiritual crisis" – a lack of faith, feeling her calling to be a missionary had left her and neither Scripture nor prayer could lift her morale.

paragraph: She was hosted by an English couple, Mr. and Mrs. Young. Per historical records, Mr. Young appeared to have made inappropriate advances towards her which she rejected. Mrs. Young blamed her for her husband’s boorish behaviour. In anguish and out of fear, she locked herself in her bedroom to pray, suppressing her cries with the room’s sofa.

paragraph: In time, she met several Moravian and other evangelical groups in London. She also came into contact with a European missionary-wife based in Sierra Leone who coached her on her future life as a mission bride. When she was about to leave London for the Gold Coast in November 1846, the husband of the missionary-wife commended her on her improved English skills. A week before her departure, she also received her first letter from Johann Widmann which gave her hope in the sustenance of providence and restored her weakened faith –an asset for her future life in the mission field at Akropong.

paragraph: While on the first steamship she had even seen in her life, a twenty year-old Rosina Binder wrote a diary entry on New Year’s Eve in 1846, "“Today seems to be a special and notable day. Exactly a year ago, I received the call to go to the Mission Field. How many difficulties have I gone through within this last year? And quite some pleasant experience too. Thanks be to God for everything.”"

paragraph: On 6 January 1847, the ship sailed past Cape Three Points and by the afternoon, towards Cape Coast. A day later, she arrived in Cape Coast after the seven-week passage. She was transported to the shore via a landing boat. Of her first impression, she penned, "“The heat was pressing; I felt like being in a completely different world. People, animals, plant and houses everything was alien to me. My mind…and my body were very strained.”" Binder and the missionaries were received by one Mr. Freeman and an English couple, Mr. and Mrs. Allen. As there was no vacancy at the mission house at Cape Coast, she was hosted by the Hatten family, a respected Euro-African mulatto family who lived a “newly built beautiful [stone] house”. Mr. Hatten, a merchant in whose name the steamship was addressed, was away on a business trip. Rosina Binder was therefore received by Mrs. Hatten.

paragraph: Section::::Early life.:Marriage.

paragraph: Rosina Binder arrived in Christiansborg on 15 January 1847. Johann Georg Widmann who had been waiting for her on the coast for two days, had by then returned to Akropong to attend to urgent mission work. A few days after her arrival, Rosina Binder finally met her fiancé, Johann Widmann for the first time. In her own account, their first meeting was full of nervous excitement. Binder recalled, "“Because I had not seen my dear groom before and would not be able to identify him, I asked that he should be pointed out to me to prevent any embarrassment. I cannot put into words the feelings that overcame my heart when I met with my dear husband. One has to experience something of this nature…We did not look at each other as if we are seeing each other for the first time, because even before we met, the Lord had tied our hearts deeply together. Before we left the room where we greeted each other for the first time, we fell on our knees and thanked the Lord, who had brought us together. We didn’t see each other as if we had seen ourselves for the first time. For the Lord, who has made the covenant – what we really believed joined our hearts in love before we knew each other. O how much would I have loved to share my joy with my beloved ones at home.”"

paragraph: Widmann, Binder and the other missionaries departed from the Gold Coast on 19 January 1847 and arrived in Akropong the next day. The wedding ceremony was on 21 January 1847. The event was attended by West Indian and Basel missionary families. Several Akropong indigenes peered through the chapel window to catch a glimpse of the bride. The newlyweds deeply cared for each other, forging a strong bond and survivalist mindset due to the eternal fear of death from tropical disease.

paragraph: During her first pregnancy, Rosina Widmann fell ill to the extent she was unable to recognise her husband. She gave birth to a boy. Johann Winder and Rosina Binder had eleven more children, with four girls dying at an early age and were buried at the Akropong mission cemetery. The rest were sent to Basel and lived in the missionary boarding house or in the missionary girls’ house. Another son died in Korntal.

paragraph: Section::::Life on the Gold Coast.

paragraph: Section::::Life on the Gold Coast.:Missionary-wife in Akropong.

paragraph: On 19 January 1847, Rosina Widmann sat in a basket to acclimatise to the lush green of the tropical rainforest of the Akan inland. Hammocks, stretchers, palanquins and baskets were most commonly used as means of transporting missionaries to the hinterlands during that period. After her wedding, she spent eighteen months trying to master the Twi language. She became proficient in Twi to the point of saying, "“In the evening, I prayed with my girls [from Akropong who lived and worked with them]. I asked the Lord in their own mother tongue. Thanks be to God that this is now possible.”" By mastering the language, she was able to make new friends among the Akuapem community.

paragraph: She also befriended the West Indian missionary families and shared wine and sweets with their children. From her diaries, she mentioned that the West Indians became dissatisfied with the mission entreprise due to the failure of the Basel mission administration to fully honour their conditions of service. A missionary living on the coast, Schiedt visited Akropong as a result. There was a fracas between J. G. Widmann and Schiedt concerning the workplace grievances of the Jamaican families. Schiedt left for the coast in late January 1847 only to return in July 1847 after Johann Widmann went to Christiansborg to settle his differences with Schiedt. According to Rosina Widmann, the disagreement caused her anxiety. Missionaries Schiedt, Widmann and Meischel then attended a mission conference in August 1847.

paragraph: She observed the marital fidelity issues between Liberian missionary, George Peter Thompson (1819 – 1889) and Angolan-born Moravian Jamaican educationist, Catherine Mulgrave (c.1827 – 1891). Furthermore, she witnessed the tension that existed among the Basel missionaries who quarrelled frequently with one another. She remarked, “"I told Brother Mohr that it would be much better to be open with each other, because otherwise I am often under a heavy inward pressure.”" This situation depressed and distressed her, making her homesick, constantly worrying about her ageing parents in Germany. She also experienced loneliness as her husband travelled for weeklong stays in neighbouring towns for mission work and to visit members of his congregation. J. G. Widmann served as the resident minister of the Basel Mission Church at Akropong, later renamed the Christ Presbyterian Church from 1845 to 1876. During this period, her school pupils who lived in her household kept her company. Rosina Widmann wrote in 1848 that one of her school girls, Amba comforted her tenderly during her illness, characterised by “headache and freezing [chills], dizziness and vomitting”. She allowed Amba and another schoolgirl, Abena to sleep in her bedroom to alleviate her loneliness when her husband was away. Another pupil, John slept in the hall.

paragraph: Once when her husband, J. G. Widmann was very ill, she lamented, "“Since two weeks, he suffers from fever and O God, a lot of tears and thoughts about death are within me. My hand is shaking while I am writing this. He has just fallen asleep and looks utterly miserable. O Lord, do you want to take him already away from me? Don’t tempt me more than I could stand. O, you will not do it. And if you take this dear soul away. O God, my Saviour make me strong. God have mercy on me that I will not lose faith.”"Her husband eventually recovered from his illness and she nursed him back to full health over a long period.

paragraph: In an episode at Akropong, one of the Jamaicans, Ann Rochester, an unmarried woman, was writhing in abdominal pain, which could not be relieved with any medication available, herbal or otherwise. Rosina Widmann was in the company Rochester’s brother and sister; Mrs. Miller, the wife of Joseph Miller, a Jamaican missionary and a few other women from the village. It turned out that she had been impregnated by a senior West Indian missionary. Both the baby and Ann Rochester died during labour. Cataloguing this tragedy in her diary, Rosina Widmann stated, "“My pain was so great and still is. O what a high price she has to pay for her sin. O, may our dear Saviour hear her sights and receive her with grace.”" The Basel mission refused to bury Ann Rochester in the mission cemetery because in their view, she was “guilty of sin.” They accused the Widmanns of shielding the identity of the alleged father of the deceased baby. The Basel missionaries at Akropong also sent letters of complaints to the Home Committee.

paragraph: In an attempt at evangelism in December 1848, she visited the tiny compound of an amiable old woman from the town of Davu. Widmann initiated conversation with hint of conversion by talking about Christian concepts such original sin, repentance, redemption, salvation, life after death and heaven. The old woman immediately walked away to the other end of the courtyard to sweep the floor and “put the chickens and goats in the stall.” Indirectly, Widmann’s message against “fetishes” had been rejected by the aged woman. Rosina Widmann then proceeded to proselytize to the elderly lady’s only daughter and several other women in the vicinity. In another case, she had a philosophical conversation with an old Akuapem woman about the concept of a Supreme Being vis-à-vis Christian and native traditional beliefs.

paragraph: Rosina Widmann often visited the sick, especially women in Akropong, within both the mission and native communities. This endeared her to the people who paid her visits in the “Christian village” or Salem quarters of Akropong. On one of such visits, an Akropong woman, out of curiosity, commented on her shawl, prompting Widmann to explain differences in textile production, as practised by her mother and sisters, using broad looms in Europe as compared the locally made Akropong stoles that were made by the method of strip-weaving. The conversation lasted until almost midnight. From the tone of her writings, Rosina Widmann had not fully acculturated into Gold Coast society by 1849.

paragraph: Widmann also acted as an arbiter in disputes in Akropong. In 1874, Widmann was an intermediary between the chieftain of Akropong, Okuapemhene, his council of elders and the elderly mother of a deceased king who lived on a plantation in a hamlet called Mamprobi, near a mausoleum where the kings were interred. The old woman’s self-imposed exile was due to feeling neglected by her sons and the then Okuapemhene, Nana Asa Kurofa. As a result, she refused to attend the traditional yearly yam festival, Odwira. The palace courtiers therefore invited Rosina Widmann to mediate in the crisis between the senior woman and the chieftain. Moreover, when one of the wives of the Akropong ruler - Gyebia, an Asante, had a dispute, her husband, the woman sought refuge at the mission station and was housed by Rosina Widmann. Widmann intervened in the matter and helped the royal couple settle the matter.

paragraph: The Widmanns returned to Korntal for furlough twice during their long sojourn on the Gold Coast.

paragraph: Section::::Life on the Gold Coast.:Work in vocational education.

paragraph: The Basel Mission’s vocational training for girls was instituted by Rosina Widmann in late January 1847, when she started classes in needlework for 12 girls at her home in Akropong where the Gold Coast mission headquarters was stationed. Rosina Widmann had sought permission from the then, Okuapemhene, Nana Kwadade I for young girls in his chiefdom to be educated. Per the Basel Mission’s newspaper in Akropong, the Station Chronicle, four female pupils enrolled at the new school almost immediately after the request. This number rose to 17 girls two months later and to 24 students by August 1847. It was later reported that the foundation class was made up of a few schoolgirls from the royal family, the ruling Asona clan of Akropong. In 1848, there were 37 girls who attended the morning general lessons with 25 boys. In 1849, 30 girls and 30 boys attended the morning school. The Basel Mission gave each pupil a small sum of money, colloquially called “food money” ("Kostgeld") for feeding expenses. The Kostgeld was an incentive to keep enrollment afloat.

paragraph: The commencement of classes at Mrs. Widmann’s school was shortly after her husband, J. G. Widmann and others had started teaching boys at Akropong. In this period, weaving was the most common form of textile production in the Akan hinterland and the profession of seamstress or dressmaker as introduced by Widmann was a novel innovation there. Previously, sewing and weaving the traditional cloth, “kente” were considered a man’s domain in Akan society. Women were forbidden from touching the loom in Akuapem jurisdictions while their counterparts on the coasts could engage in commercial crafts. Dressmaking, thus, became a source of employment and economic opportunity for women at Akropong.

paragraph: The vocational experimental model which also incorporated reading, writing, arithmetic, English and the basics of Christianity, evolved into the girls’ school at Akropong. This education framework also included school children living with missionary families in their homes to be educated in a Christian way while employed as household staff or housemaids. Rose Ann Miller (1836 – 1930) , a Jamaican educator and the oldest of West Indian children who accompanied their parents to the Gold Coast in 1843, was Rosina Widmann’s de facto interpreter. Miller started assisting Widmann as early as 1848 when she was only twelve years old.

paragraph: Some apprehensive parents did not allow their daughters to attend the school in the mornings when academic subjects were taught but permitted them to go in the afternoon to learn sewing. Later Widmann would add reading, arithmetic and Bible studies to the afternoon curriculum. She began all her classes with a short prayer recited in the Twi language. School ended with a verse from Protestant hymn. Children were required to memorise the Lord’s Prayer and English hymn verses. The teaching materials included a Twi language Primer and English textbooks.

paragraph: In one notable case, a girl named Adwoa Yirenkyiwa, born c. 1841 decided as a child that she wanted to attend Mrs. Widmann’s school. Her mother rejected her proposition initially. When Yirenkyiwa refused to eat food, her mother acceded to her wish and took her to Rosina Widmann. The first two girls who lived in the Widmann household, though not yet baptised learned to recite the prayer, "“Dear Saviour, give me a new heart! You died for us to redeem us, forgive my sins for the sake of your name.”"

paragraph: The Akropong girls who lived with the Widmanns some faced dilemmas: food choices that were culturally forbidden by Akan society. In 1849, mothers provided food for their wards in missionary care in accordance with their dietary prohibition. This system changed in 1852 when the Rosina Widmann starting providing food to pupils under her tutelage. An Akuapem girl living in her household refused chevon, fearing corporal punishment from her mother if she violated the cultural taboo.

paragraph: In April 1850, when the Widmanns went to Europe, pupils stopped attending the school and none had been baptised. The school was later re-opened by Julie Mohr and Friederike Dieterle, spouses of missionaries, Joseph Mohr and Johann Dieterle. The school's population once again increased.

paragraph: In 1851, the sister of William Yirenkyi, a local student catechist was sent to the school by their mother who was a princess. Another royal member, Susanna Luise Anyama was one of Widmann's schoolgirls. She was sent to Basel in 1858 for further training. In 1864, she was considered a prospective bride for David Asante, the first native Akan Basel missionary on the Gold Coast. Anyama, however declined the offer stating her desire to live in Europe. A close relation Anyama, Ama Otwe attended the girls’ mission school in 1853. Otwe's half-sisters Susanna and Abenewa were also pupil of Widmann. The first baptism of girls in training was on 8 August 1853. These include Catherine Buruwa who married Paul Staudt Keteku, a catechist and translator. Martha Korantemaa, who married Aburi catechist, Edward Samson, was baptised in 1856. Keteku and Buruwa's daughter was christened in 1858 – the first of its kind in Akropong for native Christians. In 1859, Yaa Krobea, fiancée of catechist, William Hoffmann Yirenkyi was baptised. Krobea was a student of Rosina Widmann. When Lydia, the baptised sister of Susanna Luise Anyama died in 1859, she became the first Akuapem Christian to be buried at the mission cemetery. As Lydia was of royal lineage, her family initially opposed it but eventually acquiesced.

paragraph: Widmann also trained non-Christian brides of the mission's native catechists and teachers to know the rudiments of the Christian faith and housekeeping. Ernestine Mader, missionary-wife of the School Inspector gave evening lessons in literacy to some of the prospective brides of teacher trainees. Some catechists whose future wives became pregnant before marriage were dismissed, as the situation was at odds with Basel Mission's Pietist standards for monogamy and procreation while the polygamous traditional society, being more flexible, permitted it childbearing outside marriage.

paragraph: In 1869, Johann Georg Widmann wrote to the Basel Home Committee on return to the Gold Coast from furlough in Germany, to brief the mission's central administration on his wife's work: "“She has taken over the running of the toddler school again and started a Sunday school for women and virgins, where she is supported by 5 monitors (assistant teachers) ... In our household, we have 15 people, some our former children, some young girls, of whom three are orphans, two girls and a little boy ...”" The number of girls who came to Rosina Widmann's school increased to 70 over time. When the Basel Mission started distributing for the school children, enrollment climbed to 80 or 90 by the end of the 1840s. Attrition was high as many students left within six to twelve months. The school population dwindled further once the mission stopped proving cloth for the enrolled pupils. In the end, only the pupils living in the missionary household remained in the school.

paragraph: Section::::Later years and death.

paragraph: Rosina Widmann stayed in Ghana, working for the Basel Mission for three decades and permanently returned to Korntal at the age of 50 in the spring of 1877, a few months after the passing of her husband. The Rev. J. G. Widmann died on 27 November 1876 and his remains were buried in Akropong. At Johann Widmann's funeral service, the chief of the town, the Krontihene attended the ceremony with his entourage of drummers though they remained outside the chapel, in silence, throughout the burial service. The chief's delegation accompanied the funeral procession to the mission cemetery.

paragraph: Rosina Widmann died on 14 November 1908 in Korntal at the age of eighty-two. Rosina's Widmann's near singular effort in the vocational education of girls at Akropong, without any instructional support from Basel, disproved an earlier assertion made by the Inspector of the Basel Mission, the Rev. Josenhans that “women were a burden for missionary work.”

description: German educator and missionary

wikidata_label: Rosina Widmann

wikipedia_title: Rosina Widmann


text:
bishop of Châlons
Souain-Perthes-lès-Hurlus
French Foreign Legion
Second Battle of Champagne

categories: Bishops of Châlons-sur-Marne,French bishops,Year of birth missing,20th-century Roman Catholic bishops

paragraph: Joseph Tissier

paragraph: Joseph-Marie Tissier was bishop of Châlons in France from 1912–1948. He dedicated the ossuary and memorial in Souain-Perthes-lès-Hurlus that holds the remains of 130 members of the French Foreign Legion who died in the Second Battle of Champagne.

description: French bishop

wikidata_label: Joseph Tissier

wikipedia_title: Joseph Tissier


text:
Florence
Quattrocento
Giorgio Vasari
Antonio Veneziano
Agnolo Gaddi
Basilica di Santa Croce
Spain
Juan I of Castile
Cathedral of Toledo
Master of the Bambino Vispo
List of Italian painters

categories: Italian male painters,1413 deaths,Year of birth uncertain,Year of birth unknown,Gothic painters,15th-century Italian painters,Quattrocento painters,Florentine painters

paragraph: Gherardo Starnina

paragraph: Gherardo Starnina (c. 1360–1413) was an Italian painter from Florence in the Quattrocento era.

paragraph: According to the biographer Giorgio Vasari, Starnina initially trained with Antonio Veneziano, then with Agnolo Gaddi. He is claimed to have participated in the painting of the frescos in the "Castellani Chapel" in Basilica di Santa Croce, Florence. He is also said to have moved to Spain in 1380 to work under Juan I of Castile, and is attributed some painting in the "San Blas chapel" of the Cathedral of Toledo.

paragraph: Several paintings formerly attributed to the Master of the Bambino Vispo are now attributed to Gherardo Starnina, and the two artists may have been the same person.

paragraph: Section::::See also.

paragraph: BULLET::::- List of Italian painters

alias:
Gherardo di Jacopo Starnina
Starnina
Compagno Di Agnolo Gaddi Starnina
Lo Starnina
Gherardo di Jacopo lo Starnina
Lo Starnina Starnina
Gherardo Di Jacopo
Gherardo di Jacopo
Gherardo Di Jacopo Starnina
Compagno di Agnolo Gaddi
Gherardo di Jacopo di Neri Starnina
lo Starnina
Gherardo di Iacopo Starna
Master of Bambino Vispo
Master of the Bambino Vispo
maestro del bambino vispo
Gherado di Jacopo di Neri Starnina
Master of the Bambino Vespo

description: Italian painter

wikidata_label: Gherardo Starnina

wikipedia_title: Gherardo Starnina


text:
Spanish
Latin
Copenhagen
Denmark
Michoacán
New Spain
Danish
Franciscan
indigenous people
Tarécuato
John of Denmark
Dania
Dacia
Gottorp
Jørgen Nybo Rasmussen
Kalmar Union
Christian II
Henrik Stangerup
Christian I
Christina
Margrethe II of Denmark
House of Oldenburg
state visit
Latin
Greek
Hebrew
German
Danish
Malmö
Lutheran
Count's Feud
Catholic
Christian III of Denmark
Lutheran Reformation
Mendicant orders
Mecklenburg
Albrecht
Spain
Arabic language
Charles V of Spain
Veracruz
Colegio de Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco
Nahuatl
Purépecha
Purépecha language
heresy
bishopric of Zamora
canonization

categories: Linguists of Mesoamerican languages,1566 deaths,Danish Mesoamericanists,Danish emigrants to Mexico,1480s births,Danish Friars Minor,Swedish princes

paragraph: Jacob the Dacian

paragraph: Jacob the Dacian (Spanish: Jacobo Daciano; Latin: Iacobus de Dacia; c. 1484 in Copenhagen, Denmark – 1566 in Michoacán, New Spain) was a Danish-born Franciscan friar. He achieved fluency in eight languages and fame among the indigenous people of Michoacán as a righteous and helpful man toward his flock. His relics, now lost, were kept for a long time by the Indians of Tarécuato who still celebrate his birthday every year. Jacob has been identified as a son of King John of Denmark.

paragraph: Section::::Name.

paragraph: The translation of his name into Medieval Latin as "Iacobus de Dacia" stems from the fact that, during the Middle Ages, the toponym "Dania", meaning Denmark, was occasionally confused with "Dacia".

paragraph: Brother Jacob also went by the name "Iacobus Gottorpius", referring to the royal estate of Gottorp (now located in Germany).

paragraph: Section::::Royal descent.

paragraph: Danish historian Jørgen Nybo Rasmussen (Rasmussen 1974, 1986) has asserted that Jacob was a son (possibly extramarital) of King John of the Kalmar Union and a younger brother of King Christian II, both Danes. This has not been mentioned by all historians but is also the basis for a novel "Brother Jacob" by Danish author Henrik Stangerup. Key arguments in a case for Jacob's royal lineage are the facts that he described himself as coming from Gottorp, the estate of Kings Christian I and John of Denmark; that he had an excellent education normally reserved for the higher nobility; and that he seemed to enjoy the protection of higher political forces. It was also common for younger sons of royalty to enter into the clergy, since they normally would not inherit the thrones. Jacob's position as an inter-continental missionary would have been very unusual for a royal prince.

paragraph: A number of modern authors have counted Jacob – or "James" – as a Danish-Norwegian-Swedish prince and one of the legitimate children of King John and Queen Christina, but Rasmussen's thesis was also met with scepticism. Queen Margrethe II of Denmark visited his burial site, in respect to Jacob being a famous brother of one of her House of Oldenburg ancestors and predecessors, while on a state visit to Mexico in 2006.

paragraph: Section::::Life in Denmark until the Reformation.

paragraph: Entering the Franciscan Order as a young man, Jacob received a good education studying Latin, Greek and Hebrew as well as his mother tongues German and Danish. In the years prior to the reformation he lived in a convent in Malmö (now in Sweden), where he argued against the Lutheran leaders. In 1530 the Fransciscans were driven from the convent, as they were in the following from the other Danish towns. He described this in the "Chronicle of the expulsion of the Greyfriars", written to serve as evidence in a potential trial to attempt to reclaim the convents later. Such a trial never came. During the religious wars known as the Count's Feud, fought between the supporters of his deposed brother, the Catholic King Christian II, and the forces of King Christian III of Denmark, many Franciscans left Denmark and went to Catholic provinces in northern Germany.

paragraph: Jacob stayed in Denmark until the fall of Malmö in 1536 when the region's Lutheran Reformation was completed and the proscription of Mendicant orders forced him into exile. First he went to Mecklenburg under the protection of Duke Albrecht who had fought on the Catholic side in the civil war. Here he was made the last "Provincial" (head) of the Franciscan province of Dacia, whence his name. He subsequently went to Spain where he studied the Arabic language and was authorized by King Charles V of Spain to go to New Spain as a missionary.

paragraph: Section::::Missionary to Mexico.

paragraph: In 1542, Brother Jacob arrived in Veracruz, and was to remain in New Spain for the rest of his life, learning several indigenous languages and founding several convents. He spent three years at the Colegio de Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco studying Nahuatl before being sent to Michoacán to work among the Purépecha, where the bulk of his missionary work was done. He learned the Purépecha language and worked ardently to improve "Indian" rights, causing problems with the colonial authorities and with local church leadership, alike. He wrote a treatise, "Declamacion del pueblo barbaro de los Indios, que habiendo recibido el bautismo, desean recibir los demas sacramentos", in which he argued that "Indians" should be allowed to be ordained into the priesthood. In this question he was overruled by church authorities and had to do penitence for these actions – he had claimed that denying "Indians" the right to ordination was in fact tantamount to heresy, a standpoint which has been vindicated in the modern Roman Catholic Church.

paragraph: He died in the convent of Tarécuato, in the bishopric of Zamora where he had served as a guardian. Beginning in 1996, attempts have been made toward his canonization.

paragraph: Section::::References.

paragraph: Section::::References.:Sources.

paragraph: BULLET::::- Stangerup, Henrik, 1997 (1991), "Brother Jacob", Marion Boyars Publishers

paragraph: BULLET::::- Rasmussen, Jørgen Nybo, 1974, "Bruder Jakob Der Dane OFM ", Franz Steiner Verlag

paragraph: BULLET::::- Rasmussen, Jørgen Nybo, 1986, "Broder Jakob den Danske, kong Christian II's yngre broder", Odense University Studies in History and Social Sciences. Vol. 98. Odense Universitetsforlag

paragraph: BULLET::::- S. Tibesar, Antonine, 1975, "Review of: Bruder Jakob Der Dane OFM by Jorgen Nybo Rasmussen" in "The Americas, Vol. 32, No. 1", pp. 164–166

paragraph: BULLET::::- This article was originally based on the at Danish Wikipedia.

wikidata_label: Jacob the Dacian

wikipedia_title: Jacob the Dacian


text: Athens

text: Platonist

text: Plato

text: scholarch

text: Academy

text: Xenocrates

text: philosophy

text: Xenocrates

text: scholarch

text: Crates of Athens

text: eromenos

text: Crantor

text: Zeno of Citium

text: Arcesilaus

text: Eusebius

text: Chron.

text: Diogenes Laërtius

text: Academy

text: philosophy

text: dialectic

text: Homer

text: Sophocles

text: epic

text: tragic

text: Suda

text: Clement of Alexandria

text: Cicero

text: Gilles Ménage

text: Plutarch

text: Lucian

text: Athenaeus

text: Deipnosophistae

text: De Oratore

text: Horace

text: Valerius Maximus

categories: 3rd-century BC Athenians,LGBT people from Greece,Ancient LGBT people,3rd-century BC deaths,3rd-century BC philosophers,Academic philosophers,Hellenistic-era philosophers in Athens,4th-century BC Athenians

paragraph: Polemon (scholarch)

paragraph: Polemon (, "gen".: Πολέμωνος; d. 270/269 BC) of Athens was an eminent Platonist philosopher and Plato's third successor as scholarch (i.e., head of the Academy) from 314/313 to 270/269 BC. A pupil of Xenocrates, he believed that philosophy should be practiced rather than just studied, and he placed the highest good in living according to nature.

paragraph: Section::::Life.

paragraph: Polemon was the son of Philostratus, a man of wealth and political distinction. In his youth, he was relatively irresponsible, but one day, when he was about thirty, on his bursting into the school of Xenocrates, at the head of a band of revelers, his attention was drawn to the sayings of Xenocrates, who continued on calmly in spite of the interruption; it just so happened that Xenocrates was discussing temperance. Polemon immediately tore off his garland and remained an attentive listener, and from that day he adopted a modest and n restrained course of life, and continued to frequent the school. On the death of Xenocrates, he even became the scholarch, in 315 BC.

paragraph: His disciples included Crates of Athens, who was his eromenos, and Crantor, as well as Zeno of Citium and Arcesilaus. According to Eusebius ("Chron.") he died in 270/269 BC (or possibly, as in some manuscripts, 276/275 BC). Diogenes Laërtius says that he died at a great age, and of natural decay. Crates was his successor in the Academy.

paragraph: Section::::Philosophy.

paragraph: Diogenes reports that he was a close follower of Xenocrates in all things. He esteemed the object of philosophy to be to exercise people in things and deeds, not in dialectic speculations; his character was grave and severe; and he took pride in displaying the mastery which he had acquired over emotions of every sort. In literature he most admired Homer and Sophocles, and he is said to have been the author of the remark, that Homer is an epic Sophocles, and Sophocles a tragic Homer.

paragraph: Section::::Writings.

paragraph: According to Diogenes Laërtius, Polemon wrote several treatises, of which none were extant when the "Suda" was compiled. There is, however, a quotation made by Clement of Alexandria, either from Polemon or from another philosopher of the same name, "in "Concerning the Life in Accordance with Nature"" (), and another passage, upon happiness, which agrees precisely with the statement of Cicero, that Polemon placed the "summum bonum" (highest good) in living according to the laws of nature.

paragraph: Section::::Sources.

paragraph: BULLET::::- Primary

paragraph: BULLET::::- Diogenes Laërtius, "Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers" iv. 16-20 (with the commentary of Gilles Ménage)

paragraph: BULLET::::- "Suda", "Polemon"

paragraph: BULLET::::- Plutarch, "de Adul. et Amic." 32, p. 71e

paragraph: BULLET::::- Lucian, "Bis Accusat." 16, vol. ii. p. 811

paragraph: BULLET::::- Athenaeus, "Deipnosophistae" ii., p. 44e

paragraph: BULLET::::- Cicero, "Academica" i. 9, ii. 35, 42; "De Oratore" iii. 18; "de Finibus" ii. 6, 11, iv. 2, 6, 16, 18, v. 1, 5, 7, and elsewhere

paragraph: BULLET::::- Horace, "Sermones" ii. 3. 253ff.

paragraph: BULLET::::- Valerius Maximus, vi. 9

paragraph: BULLET::::- Secondary

description: Ancient greek philosopher

wikidata_label: Polemon

wikipedia_title: Polemon (scholarch)


text:
Tarrytown, New York
New York City
Morosco Theatre
California
Edward Everett Horton
Trixie Friganza
Jane Cowl
Essanay Studios
silent movie
Charles Ray
Hollywood
Keystone Studios
Famous Players
The White Sister
When My Lady Smiles
Her Country First
Smudge
Chicago, Illinois
Los Angeles, California
Thomas Oberle
matinee idol
Glendale, California

categories: 1943 deaths,American film actresses,People from Tarrytown, New York,American stage actresses,American silent film actresses,1869 births,Actresses from New York (state)

paragraph: Florence Oberle

paragraph: Florence Oberle (December 6, 1869 – July 10, 1943) was a stage and film actress from Tarrytown, New York.

paragraph: Section::::Biography.

paragraph: Born in 1869, Oberle appeared on the New York City stage in Morosco Theatre and David Belasco productions until 1915. She was once billed as "the most beautiful woman on the American stage". In California Oberle played opposite theatrical stars like Edward Everett Horton and Trixie Friganza. Her last appearance on stage came in 1931, performing with Jane Cowl in "Camille".

paragraph: In 1915 Oberle signed with Essanay Studios, a pioneer film studio of the silent movie era. She also performed with Charles Ray and various Hollywood actors at Keystone Studios, Triangle Studios, and Famous Players. Among her films are "The White Sister" (1915), "When My Lady Smiles" (1915), "Separating From Sarah" (1916), "The Invisible Web" (1917), "Her Country First" (1918), and "Smudge" (1922).

paragraph: Oberle lived for many years in Chicago, Illinois. When she retired she came to reside in Los Angeles, California, in 1931. Her home was at 1237 West 96th Street. She was the widow of Thomas Oberle, a matinee idol who died in the early years of the twentieth century.

paragraph: Florence Oberle died at the Little Romano Sanitarium in North Glendale, California, in 1943. She was seventy-three years old.

description: American actress

wikidata_label: Florence Oberle

wikipedia_title: Florence Oberle


text:
ajaw
Maya
Tikal
Chak Tok Ich'aak I
Late Preclassic

categories: Rulers of Tikal,1st-century rulers,1st century in the Maya civilization

paragraph: Yax Ehb Xook

paragraph: Yax Ehb Xook, also known as Yax Moch Xok and Yax Chakte'I Xok, (fl. c. 90) was dynastic founder and "ajaw" of the Maya city-state of Tikal. He ruled c. 90 AD.

paragraph: Previous estimates had placed the founder at AD 170-235 or AD 219-238. But these ranges had been derived by placing the death of the ninth ruler Chak Tok Ich'aak I who died in AD 378. In fact, Chak Tok Ich'aak I, was Tikal's fourteenth ruler and not its ninth. This earlier foundation date only reinforces Tikal's pivotal role in the genesis of Classic civilization in the Maya Lowlands, synchronizing it with developments in the Highlands and Pacific Coast that have traditionally been designated Late Preclassic but bear most of the hallmarks of Early Classic civilization.

alias:
Yax Moch Xoc
Yax Ehb’ Xoc

description: first known ruler of Mayan city Tikal

wikidata_label: Yax Ehb' Xok

wikipedia_title: Yax Ehb Xook


text: FRS

text: natural philosopher

text: polymath

text: great fire of 1666

text: Royal Society

text: Gresham Professor of Geometry

text: Great Fire of London

text: Allan Chapman

text: Leonardo

text: Wadham College, Oxford

text: Protectorate

text: Royalist

text: John Wilkins

text: Thomas Willis

text: Robert Boyle

text: gas law

text: Gregorian telescope

text: Micrographia

text: evolution

text: refraction

text: wave theory of light

text: gravity

text: inverse square law

text: Isaac Newton

text: Royal Society

text: John Dee

text: Trithemian

text: steganography

text: Queen Elizabeth I

text: John Ward

text: John Aubrey

text: Freshwater

text: Isle of Wight

text: Freshwater's Church of All Saints

text: Charles I

text: iron ore

text: watchmaker

text: limner

text: illuminated manuscript

text: Peter Lely

text: Westminster School

text: Richard Busby

text: Euclid's "Elements"

text: mechanics

text: George Hooper

text: Bishop of Bath and Wells

text: organ

text: Christ Church

text: Oxford

text: Thomas Willis

text: Master of Arts

text: Christopher Wren

text: John Wilkins

text: Royal Society

text: Ralph Greatorex

text: Boyle's law

text: John Tillotson

text: Wellcome Library

text: Royal Society

text: capillary action

text: Robert Moray

text: venous

text: arterial

text: barometric pressure

text: pendulum

text: second of arc

text: gunpowder

text: Micrographia

text: Gresham Professor of Geometry

text: Thomas Newcomen

text: steam engine

text: John Robison

text: Papin

text: Royalist

text: Wadham College

text: Christopher Wren

text: Isaac Newton

text: Oldenburg

text: watch escapement

text: Robert Gunther

text: ciphers

text: Thomas Tompion

text: Christopher Wren

text: John Aubrey

text: Gresham College

text: St Helen's Bishopsgate

text: the law

text: elasticity

text: tension

text: elastic

text: balance spring

text: Christiaan Huygens

text: anagram

text: Galileo

text: Isaac Newton

text: Henry Oldenburg

text: Geometry

text: Gresham College

text: nodal patterns

text: modes of vibration

text: aether

text: Micrographia

text: Royal Society

text: Dugald Stewart

text: Principia

text: Edmond Halley

text: Alexis Clairaut

text: pendulum

text: Giovanni Riccioli

text: anchor escapement

text: William Derham

text: longitude

text: coil spring

text: balance spring

text: Christiaan Huygens

text: Micrographia

text: microscope

text: telescope

text: biology

text: cell

text: National Museum of Health and Medicine

text: Maryland

text: oxygen

text: fossil wood

text: Ammonites

text: John Ray

text: extinction

text: Charles Lyell

text: Gamma Draconis

text: parallax

text: James Bradley

text: aberration of light

text: Pleiades

text: lunar craters

text: rings of Saturn

text: double-star

text: Gamma Arietis

text: memory

text: Richard Semon

text: Christopher Wren

text: Great Fire

text: Monument to the fire

text: Royal Greenwich Observatory

text: Montagu House in Bloomsbury

text: Bethlem Royal Hospital

text: Royal College of Physicians

text: Ragley Hall

text: Ramsbury Manor

text: St Mary Magdalene

text: Willen

text: Buckinghamshire

text: Christopher Wren

text: St Paul's Cathedral

text: Pepys Library

text: Samuel Pepys

text: telescope

text: transits

text: spiral staircase

text: renovation of Paris

text: Zacharias Conrad von Uffenbach

text: John Aubrey

text: Time

text: Ashley Montagu

text: Lisa Jardine

text: University of Cincinnati

text: Jan Baptist van Helmont

text: Chambers' "Cyclopedia"

text: St Helen's Bishopsgate

text: 1993 Bishopsgate bombing

text: Rita Greer

text: 3514 Hooke

text: Craters

text: Moon

text: Mars

text: List of new memorials to Robert Hooke 2005 – 2009

text: The Boyle-Hooke plaque

text: Oxford

text: full text at

text: Project Gutenberg

text: with illustrations at Internet Archive

text: The Posthumous Works of Robert Hooke

text: Catenary

text: Great red spot

text: Hooke's atom

text: List of astronomical instrument makers

text: Optical microscope

text: Reticle

text: Sash window

text: Savart wheel

text: Shadowgraph

text: Universal joint

text: Hooke's law

text: Robert Gunther

text: "Micrographia: or some physiological descriptions of minute bodies made by magnifying glasses with observations and inquiries thereupon..."

text: UCMP – Robert Hooke (1635–1703)

text: The Monument – Dr. Robert Hooke

text: Robert Hooke

text: A timeline of Hooke's life

text: "England's Leonardo"

text: An engraved bust

text: Hooke's "Micrographia"

text: Project Gutenberg

text: "Micrographia"

text: Linda Hall Library

text: Lost manuscript of Robert Hooke discovered

text: The Guardian

text: Manuscript bought for The Royal Society

text: The Guardian

text: A Panoramic Virtual Tour of Hooke's Church at Willen

text: Robert Hooke's Books

text: Exploring our archives

text: "The posthumous works of Robert Hooke"

text: Linda Hall Library

text: Digitzed images of "Micrographia"

categories: Age of Enlightenment,1703 deaths,Scientific instrument makers,Artists from London,English Anglicans,People educated at Westminster School, London,Natural philosophers,Original Fellows of the Royal Society,Professors of Gresham College,English inventors,People from Freshwater, Isle of Wight,English physicists,1635 births,English Christians,Alumni of Wadham College, Oxford,17th-century English architects

paragraph: Robert Hooke

paragraph: Robert Hooke FRS (;  – 3 March 1703) was an English natural philosopher, architect and polymath.

paragraph: His adult life comprised three distinct periods: as a scientific inquirer lacking money; achieving great wealth and standing through his reputation for hard work and scrupulous honesty following the great fire of 1666, and eventually becoming ill and party to jealous intellectual disputes (the last may have contributed to his relative historical obscurity).

paragraph: At one time he was simultaneously the curator of experiments of the Royal Society, a member of its council, Gresham Professor of Geometry, and Surveyor to the City of London after the Great Fire of London (in which capacity he appears to have performed more than half of all the surveys after the fire). He was also an important architect of his time – though few of his buildings now survive and some of those are generally misattributed – and was instrumental in devising a set of planning controls for London whose influence remains today. Allan Chapman has characterised him as "England's Leonardo".

paragraph: Hooke studied at Wadham College, Oxford during the Protectorate where he became one of a tightly knit group of ardent Royalists led by John Wilkins. Here he was employed as an assistant to Thomas Willis and to Robert Boyle, for whom he built the vacuum pumps used in Boyle's gas law experiments, and conducted the experiments themselves. He built some of the earliest Gregorian telescopes and observed the rotations of Mars and Jupiter. In 1665 he inspired the use of microscopes for scientific exploration with his book, "Micrographia". Based on his microscopic observations of fossils, Hooke was an early proponent of biological evolution. He investigated the phenomenon of refraction, deducing the wave theory of light, and was the first to suggest that matter expands when heated and that air is made of small particles separated by relatively large distances. He proposed that heat was the manifestation of faster movement of the particles of matter. He performed pioneering work in the field of surveying and map-making and was involved in the work that led to the first modern plan-form map, though his plan for London on a grid system was rejected in favour of rebuilding along the existing routes. He also came near to an experimental proof that gravity follows an inverse square law, and first hypothesised that such a relation governs the motions of the planets, an idea which was developed by Isaac Newton, and formed part of a dispute between the two which caused Newton to try to erase Hooke's legacy. He originated the terraqueous globe theory of geology, disputed the literal Biblical account of the age of the earth, hypothesised the idea of extinction, and wrote numerous times of the likelihood that fossils on hill and mountain tops had been raised there by "earthquakes", a general term of the time for geological processes. Much of Hooke's scientific work was conducted in his capacity as curator of experiments of the Royal Society, a post he held from 1662, or as part of the household of Robert Boyle.

paragraph: Section::::Life and works.

paragraph: Much of what is known of Hooke's early life comes from an autobiography that he commenced in 1696 but never completed. Richard Waller mentions it in his introduction to "The Posthumous Works of Robert Hooke, M.D. S.R.S.", printed in 1705. In the chapter "Of Dr. Dee's Book of Spirits", Hooke argues that John Dee made use of Trithemian steganography, to conceal his communication with Queen Elizabeth I. The work of Waller, along with John Ward's "Lives of the Gresham Professors" (with a list of his major works) and John Aubrey's "Brief Lives", form the major near-contemporaneous biographical accounts of Hooke.

paragraph: Section::::Life and works.:Early life.

paragraph: Robert Hooke was born in 1635 in Freshwater on the Isle of Wight to John Hooke and Cecily Gyles. Robert was the last of four children, two boys and two girls, and there was an age difference of seven years between him and the next youngest. Their father John was a Church of England priest, the curate of Freshwater's Church of All Saints, and his two brothers (Robert's uncles) were also ministers. Robert Hooke was expected to succeed in his education and join the Church. John Hooke also was in charge of a local school, and so was able to teach Robert, at least partly at home perhaps due to the boy's frail health. He was a Royalist and almost certainly a member of a group who went to pay their respects to Charles I when he escaped to the Isle of Wight. Robert, too, grew up to be a staunch monarchist.

paragraph: As a youth, Robert Hooke was fascinated by observation, mechanical works, and drawing, interests that he would pursue in various ways throughout his life. He dismantled a brass clock and built a wooden replica that, by all accounts, worked "well enough", and he learned to draw, making his own materials from coal, chalk and ruddle (iron ore).

paragraph: On his father's death in 1648, Robert was left a sum of forty pounds that enabled him to buy an apprenticeship; with his poor health throughout his life but evident mechanical facility his father had it in mind that he might become a watchmaker or limner (a decorator of illuminated manuscripts), though Hooke was also interested in painting. Hooke was an apt student, so although he went to London to take up an apprenticeship, and studied briefly with Samuel Cowper and Peter Lely, he was soon able to enter Westminster School in London, under Dr. Richard Busby. Hooke quickly mastered Latin and Greek, made some study of Hebrew, and mastered Euclid's "Elements". Here, too, he embarked on his lifelong study of mechanics.

paragraph: It appears that Hooke was one of a group of students whom Busby educated in parallel to the main work of the school. Contemporary accounts say he was "not much seen" in the school, and this appears to be true of others in a similar position. Busby, an ardent and outspoken Royalist (he had the school observe a fast-day on the anniversary of the King's beheading), was by all accounts trying to preserve the nascent spirit of scientific inquiry that had begun to flourish in Carolean England but which was at odds with the literal Biblical teachings of the Protectorate. To Busby and his select students the Anglican Church was a framework to support the spirit of inquiry into God's work, those who were able were destined by God to explore and study His creation, and the priesthood functioned as teachers to explain it to those who were less able. This was exemplified in the person of George Hooper, the Bishop of Bath and Wells, whom Busby described as "the best scholar, the finest gentleman and will make the completest bishop that ever was educated at Westminster School".

paragraph: Section::::Life and works.:Oxford.

paragraph: In 1653, Hooke (who had also undertaken a course of twenty lessons on the organ) secured a chorister's place at Christ Church, Oxford. He was employed as a "chemical assistant" to Dr Thomas Willis, for whom Hooke developed a great admiration. There he met the natural philosopher Robert Boyle, and gained employment as his assistant from about 1655 to 1662, constructing, operating, and demonstrating Boyle's "machina Boyleana" or air pump. It was not until 1662 or 1663 that was awarded a Master of Arts degree. In 1659 Hooke described some elements of a method of heavier-than-air flight to Wilkins, but concluded that human muscles were insufficient to the task.

paragraph: Hooke himself characterised his Oxford days as the foundation of his lifelong passion for science, and the friends he made there were of paramount importance to him throughout his career, particularly Christopher Wren. Wadham was then under the guidance of John Wilkins, who had a profound impact on Hooke and those around him. Wilkins was also a Royalist, and acutely conscious of the turmoil and uncertainty of the times. There was a sense of urgency in preserving the scientific work which they perceived as being threatened by the Protectorate. Wilkins' "philosophical meetings" in his study were clearly important, though few records survive except for the experiments Boyle conducted in 1658 and published in 1660. This group went on to form the nucleus of the Royal Society. Hooke developed an air pump for Boyle's experiments based on the pump of Ralph Greatorex, which was considered, in Hooke's words, "too gross to perform any great matter." It is known that Hooke had a particularly keen eye, and was an adept mathematician, neither of which applied to Boyle. It has been suggested that Hooke probably made the observations and may well have developed the mathematics of Boyle's law. Regardless, it is clear that Hooke was a valued assistant to Boyle and the two retained a mutual high regard.

paragraph: A chance surviving copy of Willis' pioneering "De anima brutorum", a gift from the author, was chosen by Hooke from Wilkins' library on his death as a memento at John Tillotson's invitation. This book is now in the Wellcome Library. The book and its inscription in Hooke's hand are a testament to the lasting influence of Wilkins and his circle on the young Hooke.

paragraph: Section::::Life and works.:Royal Society.

paragraph: The Royal Society was founded in 1660, and in April 1661 the society debated a short tract on the rising of water in slender glass pipes, in which Hooke reported that the height water rose was related to the bore of the pipe (due to what is now termed capillary action). His explanation of this phenomenon was subsequently published in "Micrography Observ." issue 6, in which he also explored the nature of "the fluidity of gravity". On 5 November 1661, Sir Robert Moray proposed that a Curator be appointed to furnish the society with Experiments, and this was unanimously passed with Hooke being named. His appointment was made on 12 November, with thanks recorded to Dr. Boyle for releasing him to the Society's employment.

paragraph: In 1664, Sir John Cutler settled an annual gratuity of fifty pounds on the Society for the founding of a "Mechanick Lecture", and the Fellows appointed Hooke to this task. On 27 June 1664 he was confirmed to the office, and on 11 January 1665 was named "Curator by Office" for life with an additional salary of £30 to Cutler's annuity.

paragraph: Hooke's role at the Royal Society was to demonstrate experiments from his own methods or at the suggestion of members. Among his earliest demonstrations were discussions of the nature of air, the implosion of glass bubbles which had been sealed with comprehensive hot air, and demonstrating that the "Pabulum vitae" and "flammae" were one and the same. He also demonstrated that a dog could be kept alive with its thorax opened, provided air was pumped in and out of its lungs, and noting the difference between venous and arterial blood. There were also experiments on the subject of gravity, the falling of objects, the weighing of bodies and measuring of barometric pressure at different heights, and pendulums up to .

paragraph: Instruments were devised to measure a second of arc in the movement of the sun or other stars, to measure the strength of gunpowder, and in particular an engine to cut teeth for watches, much finer than could be managed by hand, an invention which was, by Hooke's death, in constant use.

paragraph: In 1663 and 1664, Hooke produced his microscopy observations, subsequently collated in "Micrographia" in 1665.

paragraph: On 20 March 1664, Hooke succeeded Arthur Dacres as Gresham Professor of Geometry. Hooke received the degree of "Doctor of Physic" in December 1691.

paragraph: Section::::Life and works.:Hooke and Newcomen.

paragraph: There is a widely reported but seemingly incorrect story that Dr Hooke corresponded with Thomas Newcomen in connection with Newcomen's invention of the steam engine. This story was discussed by Rhys Jenkins, a past President of the Newcomen Society, in 1936. Jenkins traced the origin of the story to an article "Steam Engines" by Dr. John Robison (1739–1805) in the third edition of the "Encyclopædia Britannica”, which says "There are to be found among Hooke's papers, in the possession of the Royal Society, some notes of observations, for the use of Newcomen, his countryman, on Papin's boasted method of transmitting to a great distance the action of an mill by means of pipes", and that Hooke had dissuaded Newcomen from erecting a machine on this principle. Jenkins points out a number of errors in Robison's article, and questions whether the correspondent might in fact have been Newton, whom Hooke is known to have corresponded with, the name being misread as Newcomen. A search by Mr. H W Dickinson of Hooke's papers held by the Royal Society, which had been bound together in the middle of the 18th century, i.e. before Robison's time, and carefully preserved since, revealed no trace of any correspondence between Hooke and Newcomen. Jenkins concluded "... this story must be omitted from the history of the steam engine, at any rate until documentary evidence is forthcoming."

paragraph: In the intervening years since 1936 no such evidence has been found, but the story persists. For instance, in a book published in 2011 it is said that "in a letter dated 1703 Hooke did suggest that Newcomen use condensing steam to drive the piston."

paragraph: Section::::Personality and disputes.

paragraph: Hooke was irascible, at least in later life, proud, and prone to take umbrage with intellectual competitors, though he was by all accounts also a staunch friend and ally and was loyal always to the circle of ardent Royalists with whom he had his early training at Wadham College, particularly Christopher Wren. His reputation suffered after his death and this is popularly attributed to a dispute with Isaac Newton over credit for his work on gravitation, the planets and to a lesser degree light. His dispute with Oldenburg about whether Oldenburg had leaked or passed on details of Hooke's watch escapement to others is another well-known example.

paragraph: Newton, as President of the Royal Society, did much to obscure Hooke, including, it is said, destroying (or failing to preserve) the only known portrait of the man. It did not help that the first biography of Wren, "Parentalia", was written by Wren's son, and tended to exaggerate Wren's work over all others. Hooke's reputation was revived during the twentieth century through studies by Robert Gunther and Margaret 'Espinasse. After a long period of relative obscurity he has now been recognised as one of the most important scientists of his age.

paragraph: Hooke was apt to use ciphers and guard his ideas. As curator of Experiments to the Royal Society he was responsible for demonstrating many ideas sent in to the Society, and there is evidence that he would subsequently assume some credit for these ideas. Hooke also was immensely busy and thus unable – or in some cases unwilling, pending a way of profiting from the enterprise via letters patent – to develop all of his own ideas. This was a time of immense scientific progress, and numerous ideas were developed in several places simultaneously.

paragraph: None of this should distract from Hooke's inventiveness, his remarkable experimental facility, and his capacity for hard work. His ideas about gravitation, and his claim of priority for the inverse square law, are outlined below. He was granted a large number of patents for inventions and refinements in the fields of elasticity, optics, and barometry. The Royal Society's Hooke papers (recently discovered after disappearing when Newton took over) will open up a modern reassessment.

paragraph: Much has been written about the unpleasant side of Hooke's personality, starting with comments by his first biographer, Richard Waller, that Hooke was "in person, but despicable" and "melancholy, mistrustful, and jealous." Waller's comments influenced other writers for well over two centuries, so that a picture of Hooke as a disgruntled, selfish, anti-social curmudgeon dominates many older books and articles. For example, Arthur Berry said that Hooke "claimed credit for most of the scientific discoveries of the time." Sullivan wrote that Hooke was "positively unscrupulous" and possessing an "uneasy apprehensive vanity" in dealings with Newton. Manuel used the phrase "cantankerous, envious, vengeful" in his description. More described Hooke having both a "cynical temperament" and a "caustic tongue." Andrade was more sympathetic, but still used the adjectives "difficult", "suspicious", and "irritable" in describing Hooke.

paragraph: The publication of Hooke's diary in 1935 revealed other sides of the man that 'Espinasse, in particular, has detailed carefully. She writes that "the picture which is usually painted of Hooke as a morose and envious recluse is completely false." Hooke interacted with noted craftsmen such as Thomas Tompion, the clockmaker, and Christopher Cocks (Cox), an instrument maker. Hooke often met Christopher Wren, with whom he shared many interests, and had a lasting friendship with John Aubrey. Hooke's diaries also make frequent reference to meetings at coffeehouses and taverns, and to dinners with Robert Boyle. He took tea on many occasions with his lab assistant, Harry Hunt. Within his family, Hooke took both a niece and a cousin into his home, teaching them mathematics.

paragraph: Robert Hooke spent his life largely on the Isle of Wight, at Oxford, and in London. He never married, but his diary records that he had sexual relations with his niece, Grace, and several of his housekeepers. He at one point records that one of these housekeepers gave birth to a girl, but doesn't note the paternity of the child. On 3 March 1703, Hooke died in London, and a chest containing £8,000 in money and gold was found in his room at Gresham College. Although he had talked of leaving a generous bequest to the Royal Society which would have given his name to a library, laboratory and lectures, no will was found and the money passed to an illiterate cousin, Elizabeth Stephens. He was buried at St Helen's Bishopsgate, but the precise location of his grave is unknown.

paragraph: Section::::Science.

paragraph: Section::::Science.:Mechanics.

paragraph: In 1660, Hooke discovered the law of elasticity which bears his name and which describes the linear variation of tension with extension in an elastic spring. He first described this discovery in the anagram "ceiiinosssttuv", whose solution he published in 1678 as "Ut tensio, sic vis" meaning "As the extension, so the force." Hooke's work on elasticity culminated, for practical purposes, in his development of the balance spring or hairspring, which for the first time enabled a portable timepiece – a watch – to keep time with reasonable accuracy. A bitter dispute between Hooke and Christiaan Huygens on the priority of this invention was to continue for centuries after the death of both; but a note dated 23 June 1670 in the Hooke Folio (see "External links" below), describing a demonstration of a balance-controlled watch before the Royal Society, has been held to favour Hooke's claim.

paragraph: It is interesting from a twentieth-century vantage point that Hooke first announced his law of elasticity as an anagram. This was a method sometimes used by scientists, such as Hooke, Huygens, Galileo, and others, to establish priority for a discovery without revealing details.

paragraph: Hooke became Curator of Experiments in 1662 to the newly founded Royal Society, and took responsibility for experiments performed at its weekly meetings. This was a position he held for over 40 years. While this position kept him in the thick of science in Britain and beyond, it also led to some heated arguments with other scientists, such as Huygens (see above) and particularly with Isaac Newton and the Royal Society's Henry Oldenburg. In 1664 Hooke also was appointed Professor of Geometry at Gresham College in London and Cutlerian Lecturer in Mechanics.

paragraph: On 8 July 1680, Hooke observed the nodal patterns associated with the modes of vibration of glass plates. He ran a bow along the edge of a glass plate covered with flour, and saw the nodal patterns emerge. In acoustics, in 1681 he showed the Royal Society that musical tones could be generated from spinning brass cogs cut with teeth in particular proportions.

paragraph: Section::::Science.:Gravitation.

paragraph: While many of his contemporaries believed in the aether as a medium for transmitting attraction or repulsion between separated celestial bodies, Hooke argued for an attracting principle of gravitation in "Micrographia" (1665). Hooke's 1666 Royal Society lecture on gravity added two further principles: that all bodies move in straight lines till deflected by some force and that the attractive force is stronger for closer bodies. Dugald Stewart quoted Hooke's own words on his system of the world. "I will explain," says Hooke, in a communication to the Royal Society in 1666, "a system of the world very different from any yet received. It is founded on the following positions. 1. That all the heavenly bodies have not only a gravitation of their parts to their own proper centre, but that they also mutually attract each other within their spheres of action. 2. That all bodies having a simple motion, will continue to move in a straight line, unless continually deflected from it by some extraneous force, causing them to describe a circle, an ellipse, or some other curve. 3. That this attraction is so much the greater as the bodies are nearer. As to the proportion in which those forces diminish by an increase of distance, I own I have not discovered it..."

paragraph: Hooke's 1670 Gresham lecture explained that gravitation applied to "all celestial bodies" and added the principles that the gravitating power decreases with distance and that in the absence of any such power bodies move in straight lines.

paragraph: Hooke published his ideas about the "System of the World" again in somewhat developed form in 1674, as an addition to "An Attempt to Prove the Motion of the Earth from Observations". Hooke clearly postulated mutual attractions between the Sun and planets, in a way that increased with nearness to the attracting body.

paragraph: Hooke's statements up to 1674 made no mention, however, that an inverse square law applies or might apply to these attractions. Hooke's gravitation was also not yet universal, though it approached universality more closely than previous hypotheses. Hooke also did not provide accompanying evidence or mathematical demonstration. On these two aspects, Hooke stated in 1674: "Now what these several degrees [of gravitational attraction] are I have not yet experimentally verified" (indicating that he did not yet know what law the gravitation might follow); and as to his whole proposal: "This I only hint at present", "having my self many other things in hand which I would first compleat, and therefore cannot so well attend it" (i.e. "prosecuting this Inquiry").

paragraph: In November 1679, Hooke initiated a remarkable exchange of letters with Newton (of which the full text is now published). Hooke's ostensible purpose was to tell Newton that Hooke had been appointed to manage the Royal Society's correspondence. Hooke therefore wanted to hear from members about their researches, or their views about the researches of others; and as if to whet Newton's interest, he asked what Newton thought about various matters, giving a whole list, mentioning "compounding the celestial motions of the planetts of a direct motion by the tangent and an attractive motion towards the central body", and "my hypothesis of the lawes or causes of springinesse", and then a new hypothesis from Paris about planetary motions (which Hooke described at length), and then efforts to carry out or improve national surveys, the difference of latitude between London and Cambridge, and other items. Newton's reply offered "a fansy of my own" about a terrestrial experiment (not a proposal about celestial motions) which might detect the Earth's motion, by the use of a body first suspended in air and then dropped to let it fall. The main point was to indicate how Newton thought the falling body could experimentally reveal the Earth's motion by its direction of deviation from the vertical, but he went on hypothetically to consider how its motion could continue if the solid Earth had not been in the way (on a spiral path to the centre). Hooke disagreed with Newton's idea of how the body would continue to move. A short further correspondence developed, and towards the end of it Hooke, writing on 6 January 1679|80 to Newton, communicated his "supposition ... that the Attraction always is in a duplicate proportion to the Distance from the Center Reciprocall, and Consequently that the Velocity will be in a subduplicate proportion to the Attraction and Consequently as Kepler Supposes Reciprocall to the Distance." (Hooke's inference about the velocity was actually incorrect)

paragraph: In 1686, when the first book of Newton's "Principia" was presented to the Royal Society, Hooke claimed that he had given Newton the "notion" of "the rule of the decrease of Gravity, being reciprocally as the squares of the distances from the Center". At the same time (according to Edmond Halley's contemporary report) Hooke agreed that "the Demonstration of the Curves generated therby" was wholly Newton's.

paragraph: A recent assessment about the early history of the inverse square law is that "by the late 1660s," the assumption of an "inverse proportion between gravity and the square of distance was rather common and had been advanced by a number of different people for different reasons". Newton himself had shown in the 1660s that for planetary motion under a circular assumption, force in the radial direction had an inverse-square relation with distance from the center. Newton, faced in May 1686 with Hooke's claim on the inverse square law, denied that Hooke was to be credited as author of the idea, giving reasons including the citation of prior work by others before Hooke. Newton also firmly claimed that even if it had happened that he had first heard of the inverse square proportion from Hooke, which it had not, he would still have some rights to it in view of his mathematical developments and demonstrations, which enabled observations to be relied on as evidence of its accuracy, while Hooke, without mathematical demonstrations and evidence in favour of the supposition, could only guess (according to Newton) that it was approximately valid "at great distances from the center".

paragraph: On the other hand, Newton did accept and acknowledge, in all editions of the "Principia", that Hooke (but not exclusively Hooke) had separately appreciated the inverse square law in the solar system. Newton acknowledged Wren, Hooke and Halley in this connection in the Scholium to Proposition 4 in Book 1. Newton also acknowledged to Halley that his correspondence with Hooke in 1679–80 had reawakened his dormant interest in astronomical matters, but that did not mean, according to Newton, that Hooke had told Newton anything new or original: "yet am I not beholden to him for any light into that business but only for the diversion he gave me from my other studies to think on these things & for his dogmaticalness in writing as if he had found the motion in the Ellipsis, which inclined me to try it."

paragraph: One of the contrasts between the two men was that Newton was primarily a pioneer in mathematical analysis and its applications as well as optical experimentation, while Hooke was a creative experimenter of such great range, that it is not surprising to find that he left some of his ideas, such as those about gravitation, undeveloped. This in turn makes it understandable how in 1759, decades after the deaths of both Newton and Hooke, Alexis Clairaut, mathematical astronomer eminent in his own right in the field of gravitational studies, made his assessment after reviewing what Hooke had published on gravitation. "One must not think that this idea ... of Hooke diminishes Newton's glory", Clairaut wrote; "The example of Hooke" serves "to show what a distance there is between a truth that is glimpsed and a truth that is demonstrated".

paragraph: Section::::Science.:Horology.

paragraph: Hooke made tremendously important contributions to the science of timekeeping, being intimately involved in the advances of his time; the introduction of the pendulum as a better regulator for clocks, the balance spring to improve the timekeeping of watches, and the proposal that a precise timekeeper could be used to find the longitude at sea.

paragraph: Section::::Science.:Horology.:Anchor escapement.

paragraph: In 1655, according to his autobiographical notes, Hooke began to acquaint himself with astronomy, through the good offices of John Ward. Hooke applied himself to the improvement of the pendulum and in 1657 or 1658, he began to improve on pendulum mechanisms, studying the work of Giovanni Riccioli, and going on to study both gravitation and the mechanics of timekeeping.

paragraph: Henry Sully, writing in Paris in 1717, described the anchor escapement as "an admirable invention of which Dr. Hooke, formerly professor of geometry in Gresham College at London, was the inventor." William Derham also attributes it to Hooke.

paragraph: Section::::Science.:Horology.:Watch balance spring.

paragraph: Hooke recorded that he conceived of a way to determine longitude (then a critical problem for navigation), and with the help of Boyle and others he attempted to patent it. In the process, Hooke demonstrated a pocket-watch of his own devising, fitted with a coil spring attached to the arbour of the balance. Hooke's ultimate failure to secure sufficiently lucrative terms for the exploitation of this idea resulted in its being shelved, and evidently caused him to become more jealous of his inventions.

paragraph: Hooke developed the balance spring independently of and at least 5 years before Christiaan Huygens, who published his own work in "Journal de Scavans" in February 1675.

paragraph: Section::::Science.:Microscopy.

paragraph: In 1665 Hooke published "Micrographia", a book describing observations made with microscopes and telescopes, as well as some original work in biology. Hooke coined the term "cell" for describing biological organisms, the term being suggested by the resemblance of plant cells to cells of a honeycomb. The hand-crafted, leather and gold-tooled microscope he used to make the observations for "Micrographia", originally constructed by Christopher White in London, is on display at the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Maryland.

paragraph: "Micrographia" also contains Hooke's, or perhaps Boyle and Hooke's, ideas on combustion. Hooke's experiments led him to conclude that combustion involves a substance that is mixed with air, a statement with which modern scientists would agree, but that was not understood widely, if at all, in the seventeenth century. Hooke went on to conclude that respiration also involves a specific component of the air. Partington even goes so far as to claim that if "Hooke had continued his experiments on combustion it is probable that he would have discovered oxygen".

paragraph: Section::::Science.:Palaeontology.

paragraph: One of the observations in "Micrographia" was of fossil wood, the microscopic structure of which he compared to ordinary wood. This led him to conclude that fossilised objects like petrified wood and fossil shells, such as Ammonites, were the remains of living things that had been soaked in petrifying water laden with minerals. Hooke believed that such fossils provided reliable clues to the past history of life on earth, and, despite the objections of contemporary naturalists like John Ray who found the concept of extinction theologically unacceptable, that in some cases they might represent species that had become extinct through some geological disaster.

paragraph: Charles Lyell wrote the following in his (1832).

paragraph: 'The Posthumous Works of Robert Hooke M.D.,'... appeared in 1705, containing 'A Discourse of Earthquakes'... His treatise... is the most philosophical production of that age, in regard to the causes of former changes in the organic and inorganic kingdoms of nature. 'However trivial a thing,' he says, 'a rotten shell may appear to some, yet these monuments of nature are more certain tokens of antiquity than coins or medals, since the best of those may be counterfeited or made by art and design, as may also books, manuscripts, and inscriptions, as all the learned are now sufficiently satisfied has often been actually practised,' &c.; 'and though it must be granted that it is very difficult to read them and to raise a chronology out of them, and to state the intervals of the time wherein such or such catastrophes and mutations have happened, yet it is not impossible.

paragraph: Section::::Science.:Astronomy.

paragraph: One of the more-challenging problems tackled by Hooke was the measurement of the distance to a star (other than the Sun). The star chosen was Gamma Draconis and the method to be used was parallax determination. After several months of observing, in 1669, Hooke believed that the desired result had been achieved. It is now known that Hooke's equipment was far too imprecise to allow the measurement to succeed. Gamma Draconis was the same star James Bradley used in 1725 in discovering the aberration of light.

paragraph: Hooke's activities in astronomy extended beyond the study of stellar distance. His "Micrographia" contains illustrations of the Pleiades star cluster as well as of lunar craters. He performed experiments to study how such craters might have formed. Hooke also was an early observer of the rings of Saturn, and discovered one of the first observed double-star systems, Gamma Arietis, in 1664.

paragraph: Section::::Science.:Memory.

paragraph: A lesser-known contribution, however one of the first of its kind, was Hooke's scientific model of human memory. Hooke in a 1682 lecture to the Royal Society proposed a mechanistic model of human memory, which would bear little resemblance to the mainly philosophical models before it. This model addressed the components of encoding, memory capacity, repetition, retrieval, and forgetting – some with surprising modern accuracy. This work, overlooked for nearly 200 years, shared a variety of similarities with Richard Semon's work of 1919/1923, both assuming memories were physical and located in the brain. The model's more interesting points are that it (1) allows for attention and other top-down influences on encoding; (2) it uses resonance to implement parallel, cue-dependent retrieval; (3) it explains memory for recency; (4) it offers a single-system account of repetition and priming, and (5) the power law of forgetting can be derived from the model's assumption in a straightforward way. This lecture would be published posthumously in 1705 as the memory model was unusually placed in a series of works on the nature of light. It has been speculated that this work saw little review as the printing was done in small batches in a post-Newtonian age of science and was most likely deemed out of date by the time it was published. Further interfering with its success was contemporary memory psychologists' rejection of immaterial souls, which Hooke invoked to some degree in regards to the processes of attention, encoding and retrieval.

paragraph: Section::::Architecture.

paragraph: Hooke was Surveyor to the City of London and chief assistant to Christopher Wren, in which capacity he helped Wren rebuild London after the Great Fire in 1666, and also worked on the design of London's Monument to the fire, the Royal Greenwich Observatory, Montagu House in Bloomsbury, and the Bethlem Royal Hospital (which became known as 'Bedlam'). Other buildings designed by Hooke include The Royal College of Physicians (1679), Ragley Hall in Warwickshire, Ramsbury Manor in Wiltshire and the parish church of St Mary Magdalene at Willen in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire. Hooke's collaboration with Christopher Wren also included St Paul's Cathedral, whose dome uses a method of construction conceived by Hooke. Hooke also participated in the design of the Pepys Library, which held the manuscripts of Samuel Pepys' diaries, the most frequently cited eyewitness account of the Great Fire of London.

paragraph: Hooke and Wren both being keen astronomers, the Monument was designed to serve a scientific function as a telescope for observing transits, though Hooke's characteristically precise measurements after completion showed that the movement of the column in the wind made it unusable for this purpose. The legacy of this can be observed in the construction of the spiral staircase, which has no central column, and in the observation chamber which remains in place below ground level.

paragraph: In the reconstruction after the Great Fire, Hooke proposed redesigning London's streets on a grid pattern with wide boulevards and arteries, a pattern subsequently used in the renovation of Paris, Liverpool, and many American cities. This proposal was thwarted by arguments over property rights, as property owners were surreptitiously shifting their boundaries. Hooke was in demand to settle many of these disputes, due to his competence as a surveyor and his tact as an arbitrator.

paragraph: For an extensive study of Hooke's architectural work, see the book by Cooper.

paragraph: Section::::Likenesses.

paragraph: No authenticated portrait of Robert Hooke exists. This situation has sometimes been attributed to the heated conflicts between Hooke and Newton, although Hooke's biographer Allan Chapman rejects as a myth the claims that Newton or his acolytes deliberately destroyed Hooke's portrait. German antiquarian and scholar Zacharias Conrad von Uffenbach visited the Royal Society in 1710 and his account of his visit specifically mentions him being shown the portraits of 'Boyle and Hoock' (which were said to be good likenesses), but while Boyle's portrait survives, Hooke's has evidently been lost. In Hooke's time, the Royal Society met at Gresham College, but within a few months of Hooke's death Newton became the Society's president and plans were laid for a new meeting place. When the move to new quarters finally was made a few years later, in 1710, Hooke's Royal Society portrait went missing, and has yet to be found.

paragraph: Two contemporary written descriptions of Hooke's appearance have survived. The first was recorded by his close friend John Aubrey, who described Hooke in middle age and at the height of his creative powers:

paragraph: The second is a rather unflattering description of Hooke as an old man, written by Richard Waller:

paragraph: "Time" magazine published a portrait, supposedly of Hooke, on 3 July 1939. However, when the source was traced by Ashley Montagu, it was found to lack a verifiable connection to Hooke. Moreover, Montagu found that two contemporary written descriptions of Hooke's appearance agreed with one another, but that neither matched the "Time"'s portrait.

paragraph: In 2003, historian Lisa Jardine claimed that a recently discovered portrait was of Hooke, but this claim was disproved by William Jensen of the University of Cincinnati. The portrait identified by Jardine depicts the Flemish scholar Jan Baptist van Helmont.

paragraph: Other possible likenesses of Hooke include the following:

paragraph: BULLET::::- A seal used by Hooke displays an unusual profile portrait of a man's head, which some have argued portrays Hooke.

paragraph: BULLET::::- The engraved frontispiece to the 1728 edition of Chambers' "Cyclopedia" shows a drawing of a bust of Robert Hooke. The extent to which the drawing is based on an actual work of art is unknown.

paragraph: BULLET::::- A memorial window existed at St Helen's Bishopsgate in London, but it was a formulaic rendering, not a likeness. The window was destroyed in the 1993 Bishopsgate bombing.

paragraph: In 2003 history painter Rita Greer embarked on a self-funded project to memorialise Hooke. The Rita Greer Robert Hooke project aimed to produce credible images of him, both painted and drawn, that fitted his contemporary descriptions by John Aubrey and Richard Waller. Greer's images of Hooke, his life and work have been used for TV programmes in UK and US, in books, magazines and for PR.

paragraph: Section::::Commemorations.

paragraph: BULLET::::- 3514 Hooke, an asteroid (1971 UJ)

paragraph: BULLET::::- Craters on the Moon and on Mars are named in his honour.

paragraph: BULLET::::- The Hooke Medal

paragraph: BULLET::::- Robert Hooke Science Centre, Westminster School, London

paragraph: BULLET::::- List of new memorials to Robert Hooke 2005 – 2009

paragraph: BULLET::::- The Boyle-Hooke plaque in Oxford

paragraph: Section::::Works.

paragraph: BULLET::::- "Micrographia" full text at Project Gutenberg, with illustrations at Internet Archive

paragraph: BULLET::::- includes "An Attempt to prove the Annual Motion of the Earth, Animadversions on the Machina Coelestis of Mr. Hevelius, A Description of Helioscopes with other instruments, Mechanical Improvement of Lamps, Remarks about Comets 1677, Microscopium, Lectures on the Spring", etc.

paragraph: BULLET::::- The Posthumous Works of Robert Hooke

paragraph: BULLET::::- The posthumous works of Robert Hooke, M.D. S.R.S. Geom. Prof. Gresh. etc. containing his Cutlerian lectures, and other discourses, read at the meetings of the illustrious Royal Society... illustrated with sculptures. To these discourses is prefixt the author's life, giving an account of his studies and employments, with an enumeration of the many experiments, instruments, contrivances and inventions, by him made and produced as curator of experiments to the Royal Society published by Richard Waller, R.S. Secr.

paragraph: Section::::See also.

paragraph: BULLET::::- Catenary

paragraph: BULLET::::- Great red spot

paragraph: BULLET::::- Hooke's atom

paragraph: BULLET::::- List of astronomical instrument makers

paragraph: BULLET::::- Optical microscope

paragraph: BULLET::::- Reticle (crosshair)

paragraph: BULLET::::- Sash window

paragraph: BULLET::::- Savart wheel

paragraph: BULLET::::- Shadowgraph

paragraph: BULLET::::- Universal joint

paragraph: BULLET::::- Hooke's law

paragraph: Section::::Sources.

paragraph: BULLET::::- Wilson, Curtis (1989), Ch. 13 "The Newtonian achievement in astronomy", pp. 233–274 in "Planetary astronomy from the Renaissance to the rise of astrophysics: 2A: Tycho Brahe to Newton", Cambridge University Press, .

paragraph: Section::::Further reading.

paragraph: BULLET::::- Robert Gunther's "Early Science in Oxford", a history of science in Oxford during the Protectorate, Restoration and Age of Enlightenment, devotes five of its fourteen volumes to Hooke.

paragraph: BULLET::::- Hooke, Robert (1635–1703). "Micrographia: or some physiological descriptions of minute bodies made by magnifying glasses with observations and inquiries thereupon..."

paragraph: BULLET::::- (Published in the US as "The Forgotten Genius")

paragraph: Section::::External links.

paragraph: BULLET::::- UCMP – Robert Hooke (1635–1703)

paragraph: BULLET::::- The Monument – Dr. Robert Hooke

paragraph: BULLET::::- Robert Hooke, hosted by Westminster School

paragraph: BULLET::::- A timeline of Hooke's life

paragraph: BULLET::::- "England's Leonardo", a lecture on Robert Hooke

paragraph: BULLET::::- An engraved bust of Robert Hooke

paragraph: BULLET::::- "Micrographia"

paragraph: BULLET::::- Hooke's "Micrographia", at Project Gutenberg (downloadable collections, including searchable ASCII text and book as complete html document with images)

paragraph: BULLET::::- Hooke's "Micrographia", at Linda Hall Library

paragraph: BULLET::::- Lost manuscript of Robert Hooke discovered – from The Guardian

paragraph: BULLET::::- Manuscript bought for The Royal Society – from The Guardian

paragraph: BULLET::::- A Panoramic Virtual Tour of Hooke's Church at Willen – by Peter Loud

paragraph: BULLET::::- Robert Hooke's Books, a searchable database of books that belonged to or were annotated by Robert Hooke

paragraph: BULLET::::- "Exploring our archives", a blog by researchers at the Royal Society exploring Hooke's lost manuscript

paragraph: BULLET::::- – A 60-minute presentation by Prof. Michael Cooper, with links to slides, audio, video, and a transcript, with references

paragraph: BULLET::::- "The posthumous works of Robert Hooke" (1705) – full digital facsimile from Linda Hall Library

paragraph: BULLET::::- Digitzed images of "Micrographia" housed at the University of Kentucky Libraries Special Collections Research Center

description: English natural philosopher, architect and polymath

enwikiquote_title: Robert Hooke

wikidata_label: Robert Hooke

wikipedia_title: Robert Hooke