HOOKE, ROBERT (1635-1703), English experimental philosopher, was born on the 18th of July 1635 at Freshwater, in the Isle of Wight, where his father, John Hooke, was minister of the parish. After working for a short time with Sir Peter Lely, he went to Westminster school; and in 1653 he entered Christ Church, Oxford, as servitor. After 1655 he was employed and patronized by the Hon. Robert Boyle, who turned his skill to account in the construction of his air-pump. On the 12th of November 1662 he was appointed curator of experiments to the Royal Society, of which he was elected a fellow in 1663, and filled the office during the remainder of his life. In 1664 Sir John Cutler instituted for his benefit a mechanical lectureship of £50 a year, and in the following year he was nominated professor of geometry in Gresham College, where he subsequently resided. After the Great Fire of 1666 he constructed a model for the rebuilding of this city, which was highly approved, although the design of Sir C. Wren was preferred. During the progress of the works, however, he acted as surveyor, and accumulated in that lucrative employment a sum of several thousand pounds, discovered after his death in an old iron chest, which had evidently lain unopened for above thirty years. He fulfilled the duties of secretary to the Royal Society during five years after the death of Henry Oldenburg in 1677, publishing in 1681-1682 the papers read before that body under the title of Philosophical Collections. A protracted controversy with Johann Hevelius, in which Hooke urged the advantages of telescopic over plain sights, brought him little but discredit. His reasons were good; but his offensive style of argument rendered them unpalatable and himself unpopular. Many circumstances concurred to embitter the latter years of his life. The death, in 1687, of his niece, Mrs Grace Hooke, who had lived with him for many years, caused him deep affliction; a law-suit with Sir John Cutler about his salary (decided, however, in his favour in 1696) occasioned him prolonged anxiety; and the repeated anticipation of his discoveries inspired him with a morbid jealousy. Marks of public respect were not indeed wanting to him. A degree of M.D. was conferred on him at Doctors’ Commons in 1691, and the Royal Society made him, in 1696, a grant to enable him to complete his philosophical inventions. While engaged on this task he died, worn out with disease, on the 3rd of March 1703 in London, and was buried in St Helen’s Church, Bishopsgate Street.
In personal appearance Hooke made but a sorry show. His figure was crooked, his limbs shrunken; his hair hung in dishevelled locks over his haggard countenance. His temper was irritable, his habits penurious and solitary. He was, however, blameless in morals and reverent in religion. His scientific achievements would probably have been more striking if they had been less varied. He originated much, but perfected little. His optical investigations led him to adopt in an imperfect form the undulatory theory of light, to anticipate the doctrine of interference, and to observe, independently of though subsequently to F. M. Grimaldi (1618-1663), the phenomenon of diffraction. He was the first to state clearly that the motions of the heavenly bodies must be regarded as a mechanical problem, and he approached in a remarkable manner the discovery of universal gravitation. He invented the wheel barometer, discussed the application of barometrical indications to meteorological forecasting, suggested a system of optical telegraphy, anticipated E. F. F. Chladni’s experiment of strewing a vibrating bell with flour, investigated the nature of sound and the function of the air in respiration and combustion, and originated the idea of using the pendulum as a measure of gravity. He is credited with the invention of the anchor escapement for clocks, and also with the application of spiral springs to the balances of watches, together with the explanation of their action by the principle Ut tensio sic vis (1676).
His principal writings are Micrographia (1664); Lectiones Cutlerianae (1674-1679); and Posthumous Works, containing a sketch of his “Philosophical Algebra,” published by R. Waller in 1705.
HOOKER, JOSEPH (1814-1879), American general, was born in Hadley, Massachusetts, on the 13th of November 1814. He was educated at the military academy at West Point (1833-1837), and on graduating entered the 1st U.S. Artillery. In the war with Mexico (1846-48) he served as a staff officer, and rose by successive brevets for meritorious services to the rank of lieutenant-colonel. In 1853 he left the service and bought a large farm near Sonoma, Cal., which he managed successfully till 1858, when he was made superintendent of military roads in Oregon. Upon the opening of hostilities in the Civil War of 1861-65, he sacrificed his fine estate and offered his sword to the Federal Government. He was commissioned brigadier-general of volunteers on the 17th of May 1861 and major-general on the 5th of May 1862. The engagement of Williamsburg (May 5th) brought him and his subordinate Hancock into prominence, and Hooker received the soubriquet of “Fighting Joe.” He was engaged at the battle of Fair Oaks, and did splendid service to the Union army during the “Seven Days.” In the campaign of Northern Virginia, under General Pope (August 1862), he led his division with fiery energy at Bristoe Station, Manassas and Chantilly. In the Maryland campaign (September) he was at the head of the I. corps, Army of the Potomac, forced the defile of South Mountain and opened the way for the advance of the army. The I. corps opened the great battle of the Antietam, and sustained a sanguinary fight with the Confederates under Stonewall Jackson. Hooker himself was severely wounded. He was commissioned brigadier-general in the United States army on the 20th of September 1862, and in the battle of Fredericksburg (q.v.), under Burnside, he commanded the centre grand division (III. and V. corps). He had protested against the useless slaughter of his men on that disastrous field, and when Burnside resigned the command Hooker succeeded him. The new leader effected a much-needed re-organization in the army, which had fought many battles without success. In this task, as in subordinate commands in battle, Hooker was excelled by few. But his grave defects as a commander-in-chief were soon to be obvious. By a well-planned and well-executed flanking movement, he placed himself on the enemy’s flank, but at the decisive moment he checked the advance of his troops. Lee turned upon him, Jackson surprised and destroyed a whole army corps, and the battle of Chancellorsville (see [Wilderness]), in which Hooker was himself disabled, ended in a retreat to the old position. Yet Hooker had not entirely forfeited the confidence of his men, to whom he was still “Fighting Joe.” The second advance of Lee into Union territory, which led to the battle of Gettysburg, was strenuously resisted by Hooker, who would have inflicted a heavy blow on Lee’s scattered forces had he not been condemned to inaction by orders from Washington. Even then Hooker followed the Confederates a day only behind them, until, finding himself distrusted and forbidden to control the movements of troops within the sphere of operations, he resigned the command on the eve of the battle (June 28, 1863). Faults of temper and an excessive sense of responsibility made his continued occupation of the command impossible, but when after a signal defeat Rosecrans was besieged in Chattanooga, and Grant with all the forces of the West was hurried to the rescue, two corps of the Army of the Potomac were sent over by rail, and Hooker, who was at least one of the finest fighting generals of the service, went with them in command. He fought and won the “Battle above the Clouds” on Lookout Mountain which cleared the way for the crowning victory of the army of the Cumberland on Missionary Ridge (see [Chattanooga]). And in command of the same corps (consolidated as the XX. corps) he took part in all the battles and combats of the Atlanta campaign of 1864. When General McPherson was killed before Atlanta, the command of Grant’s old Army of the Tennessee fell vacant. Hooker, who, though only a corps commander, was senior to the other army commanders, Thomas and Schofield, was normally entitled to receive it, but General Sherman feared to commit a whole army to the guidance of a man of Hooker’s peculiar temperament, and the place was given to Howard. Hooker thereupon left the army. He was commissioned brevet-major-general in the United States army on the 13th of March 1865, and retired from active service with the full rank of major-general on the 15th of October 1868, in consequence of a paralytic seizure. The last years of his life were passed in the neighbourhood of New York. He died at Garden City, Long Island, on the 31st of October 1879.
HOOKER, SIR JOSEPH DALTON (1817- ), English botanist and traveller, second son of the famous botanist Sir W. J. Hooker, was born on the 30th of June 1817, at Halesworth, Suffolk. He was educated at Glasgow University, and almost immediately after taking his M.D. degree there in 1839 joined Sir James Ross’s Antarctic expedition, receiving a commission as assistant-surgeon on the “Erebus.” The botanical fruits of the three years he thus spent in the Southern Seas were the Flora Antarctica, Flora Novae Zelandiae and Flora Tasmanica, which he published on his return. His next expedition was to the northern frontiers of India (1847-1851), and the expenses in this case also were partially defrayed by the government. The party had its full share of adventure. Hooker and his friend Dr Campbell were detained in prison for some time by the raja of Sikkim, but nevertheless they were able to bring back important results, both geographical and botanical. Their survey of hitherto unexplored regions was published by the Calcutta Trigonometrical Survey Office, and their botanical observations formed the basis of elaborate works on the rhododendrons of the Sikkim Himalaya and on the flora of India. Among other journeys undertaken by Hooker may be mentioned those to Palestine (1860), Morocco (1871), and the United States (1877), all yielding valuable scientific information. In the midst of all this travelling in foreign countries he quickly built up for himself a high scientific reputation at home. In 1855 he was appointed assistant-director of Kew Gardens, and in 1865 he succeeded his father as full director, holding the post for twenty years. At the early age of thirty he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, and in 1873 he was chosen its president; he received three of its medals—a Royal in 1854, the Copley in 1887 and the Darwin in 1892. He acted as president of the British Association at its Norwich meeting of 1868, when his address was remarkable for its championship of Darwinian theories. Of Darwin, indeed, he was an early friend and supporter: it was he who, with Lyell, first induced Darwin to make his views public, and the author of The Origin of Species has recorded his indebtedness to Hooker’s wide knowledge and balanced judgment. Sir Joseph Hooker is the author of numerous scientific papers and monographs, and his larger books include, in addition to those already mentioned, a standard Student’s Flora of the British Isles and a monumental work, the Genera plantarum, based on the collections at Kew, in which he had the assistance of Bentham. On the publication of the last part of his Flora of British India in 1897 he was created G.C.S.I., of which order he had been made a knight commander twenty years before; and twenty years later, on attaining the age of ninety, he was awarded the Order of Merit.
HOOKER, RICHARD (1553-1600), English writer, author of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, son of Richard Vowell or Hooker, was born at Heavitree, near the city of Exeter, about the end of 1553 or beginning of 1554. Vowell was the original name of the family, but was gradually dropped, and in the 15th century its members were known as Vowell alias Hooker. At school, not only his facility in mastering his tasks, but his intellectual inquisitiveness and his fine moral qualities, attracted the special notice of his teacher, who strongly recommended his parents to educate him for the church. Though well connected, they were, however, somewhat straitened in their worldly circumstances, and Hooker was indebted for admission to the university to his uncle, John Hooker alias Vowell, chamberlain of Exeter, and in his day a man of some literary repute, who induced Bishop Jewel to become his patron and to bestow on him a clerk’s place in Corpus Christi College, Oxford. To this Hooker was admitted in 1568. Bishop Jewel died in September 1571, but Dr William Cole, president of the college, from the strong interest he felt in the young man, on account at once of his character and his abilities, spontaneously offered to take the bishop’s place as his patron; and shortly afterwards Hooker, by his own labours as a tutor, became independent of gratuitous aid. Two of his pupils, and these his favourite ones, were Edwin Sandys, afterwards author of Europae speculum, and George Cranmer, grand-nephew of the archbishop. Hooker’s reputation as a tutor soon became very high, for he had employed his five years at the university to such good purpose as not only to have acquired great proficiency in the learned languages, but to have joined to this a wide and varied culture which had delivered him from the bondage of learned pedantry; in addition to which he is said to have possessed a remarkable talent for communicating knowledge in a clear and interesting manner, and to have exercised a special influence over his pupils’ intellectual and moral tendencies. In December 1573 he was elected scholar of his college; in July 1577 he proceeded to M.A., and in September of the same year he was admitted a fellow. In 1579 he was appointed by the chancellor of the university to read the public Hebrew lecture, a duty which he continued to discharge till he left Oxford. Not long after his admission into holy orders, about 1581, he was appointed to preach at St Paul’s Cross; and, according to Walton, he was so kindly entertained by Mrs Churchman, who kept the Shunamite’s house where the preachers were boarded, that he permitted her to choose him a wife, “promising upon a fair summons to return to London and accept of her choice.” The lady selected by her was “her daughter Joan,” who, says the same authority, “found him neither beauty nor portion; and for her conditions they were too like that wife’s which is by Solomon compared to a dripping house.” It is probable that Walton has exaggerated the simplicity and passiveness of Hooker in the matter, but though, as Keble observes with justice, his writings betray uncommon shrewdness and quickness of observation, as well as a vein of keenest humour, it would appear that either gratitude or some other impulse had on this occasion led his judgment astray. After his marriage he was, about the end of 1584, presented to the living of Drayton Beauchamp in Buckinghamshire. In the following year he received a visit from his two pupils, Edwin Sandys and George Cranmer, who found him with the Odes of Horace in his hand, tending the sheep while the servant was at dinner, after which, when they on the return of the servant accompanied him to his house, “Richard was called to rock the cradle.” Finding him so engrossed by worldly and domestic cares, “they stayed but till the next morning,” and, greatly grieved at his narrow circumstances and unhappy domestic condition, “left him to the company of his wife Joan.”
The visit had, however, results of the highest moment, not only in regard to the career of Hooker, but in regard to English literature and English philosophical thought. Sandys prevailed on his father, the archbishop of York, to recommend Hooker for presentation to the mastership of the Temple, and Hooker, though his “wish was rather to gain a better country living,” having agreed after some hesitation to become a candidate, the patent conferring upon him the mastership was granted on the 17th of March 1584/5. The rival candidate was Walter Travers, a Presbyterian and evening lecturer in the same church. Being continued in the lectureship after the appointment of Hooker, Travers was in the habit of attempting a refutation in the evening of what Hooker had spoken in the morning, Hooker again replying on the following Sunday; so it was said “the forenoon sermon spake Canterbury, the afternoon Geneva.” On account of the keen feeling displayed by the partisans of both, Archbishop Whitgift deemed it prudent to prohibit the preaching of Travers, whereupon he presented a petition to the council to have the prohibition recalled. Hooker published an Answer to the Petition of Mr Travers, and also printed several sermons bearing on special points of the controversy; but, feeling strongly the unsatisfactory nature of such an isolated and fragmentary discussion of separate points, he resolved to compose an elaborate and exhaustive treatise, exhibiting the fundamental principles by which the question in dispute must be decided. It is probable that the work was begun in the latter half of 1586, and he had made considerable progress with it before, with a view to its completion, he petitioned Whitgift to be removed to a country parsonage, in order that, as he said, “I may keep myself in peace and privacy, and behold God’s blessing spring out of my mother earth, and eat my own bread without oppositions.” His desire was granted in 1591 by a presentation to the rectory of Boscombe near Salisbury. There he completed the volume containing the first four of the proposed Eight Books of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. It was entered at Stationers’ Hall on the 9th of March 1592, but was not published till 1593 or 1594. In July 1595 he was promoted by the crown to the rectory of Bishopsbourne near Canterbury, where he lived to see the completion of the fifth book in 1597. In the passage from London to Gravesend some time in 1600 he caught a severe cold from which he never recovered; but, notwithstanding great weakness and constant suffering, he “was solicitous in his study,” his one desire being “to live to finish the three remaining books of Polity.” His death took place on the 2nd of November of the same year. A volume professing to contain the sixth and eighth books of the Polity was published at London in 1648, but the bulk of the sixth book, as has been shown by Keble, is an entire deviation from the subject on which Hooker proposed to treat, and doubtless the genuine copy, known to have been completed, has been lost. The seventh book, which was published in a new edition of the work by Gauden in 1662, and the eighth book, may be regarded as in substance the composition of Hooker; but, as, in addition to wanting his final revision, they have been very unskilfully edited, if they have not been manipulated for theological purposes, their statements in regard to doubtful matters must be received with due reserve, and no reliance can be placed on their testimony where their meaning contradicts that of other portions of the Polity.