"Interest in Robert Hooke (1635-1703) is growing and his reputation is rising. A widespread sympathy for a neglected figure of seventeenth-century science is being displaced by something more positive - a mixture of astonishment at the extraordinary range and diversity of his talents, esteem for the originality and acumen of his science, admiration for his administrative capability and civic integrity, and fascination at the energy, emotion, and frailty evident in a life fully engaged with the world of Restoration London. Comparisons with his enemy Newton are giving way to an appreciation of Hooke on his own terms, passionately occupied with experiment, invention, argument, writing, teaching, and earning a living as a scientist in a competitive world. " "Jim Bennett, Michael Cooper, Michael Hunter, and Lisa Jardine each have a record of specialist research on aspects of Hooke, and they have come together, in the year of the tercentenary of his death in 1703, to provide a significant re-evaluation of the most important facets of his life and work: his career as a public man, his instrument designing and making, his scientific thought, and the private world of his personal life, his illnesses and his medications. "--Jacket.