The following paper by Allan Chapman is an extended version of a lecture given by Dr Chapman at the Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford, on 14 October 2007. The lecture was the first of a series to celebrate the centenary of the department and of the first Professor of Engineering Science at Oxford, Charles Frewin Jenkin.
Allan Chapman obtained a first class honours degree in history from Lancaster University in 1972, after which he undertook a DPhil at Wadham College, Oxford. His DPhil thesis Dividing the circle: a history of precise angular measurement in astronomy, 1500–1850 was published in 1990 (Chapman, 1990), followed by a second edition in 1995. Allan Chapman is a historian of science with particular interests in experimentation, precision mechanics and the wider circumstances concerning the lives and motivations of scientists. Robert Hooke has occupied a pivotal position in Chapman's interests for well over 30 years and, in 2005, he brought together his Hooke researches in England's Leonardo: Robert Hooke and the Seventeenth Century Scientific Revolution (Chapman, 2005). Allan Chapman is the author of eight books under his own name, along with three co-authored works, about 80 major academic papers and over 100 articles aimed at the public awareness of the importance of science and technology in history. He is also an active broadcaster in his field, having made several UK television documentary series, including a BBC programme on Hooke in 2003, as well as many radio programmes. In recognition of his work in the history of science, Allan Chapman received an honorary doctorate from the University of Central Lancashire in 2004 and was awarded an honorary DSc by the University of Salford in 2010.
To engineers, Robert Hooke is probably best known for his study of springs, relating the extension to the force applied, and for his elucidation of the engineering properties of catenary arches. But he also researched the properties of air, built a vacuum pump for Robert Boyle and devised many other scientific instruments such as the telescopes that he used for extensive and pioneering work in astronomy. His book on microscopy, Micrographia, caused a sensation when it was published in 1665 (Hooke, 1665). He was first Curator of Experiments to the Royal Society, Professor of Geometry at Gresham College, Surveyor to the City of London following the Great Fire of 1666 and an architect, collaborating with Sir Christopher Wren. The following paper describes the influence of Robert Hooke on engineering science through his innovations in measurement instruments, his contributions to mechanics, and his many inventions.
