Robert Hooke
An artist's impression of Robert Hooke. No authenticated contemporary likenesses of Hooke survive.
Born	28 July [O.S. 18 July] 1635 Freshwater, Isle of Wight, England
Died	3 March 1703 (aged 67) London, England
Fields	Physics and chemistry
Institutions	Oxford University
Alma mater	Christ Church, Oxford
Academic advisors	Robert Boyle
Known for	Hooke's Law Microscopy applied the word 'cell'
Influences	Richard Busby

Robert Hooke FRS (28 July [O.S. 18 July] 1635 – 3 March 1703) was an English natural philosopher, architect and polymath.

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, but eventually becoming ill and party to jealous intellectual disputes. These issues may have contributed to his relative historical obscurity.

He was at one time simultaneously the curator of experiments of the Royal Society and a member of its council, Gresham Professor of Geometry and a 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".^[1]

Hooke studied at Wadham College during the Protectorate where he became one of a tightly knit group of ardent Royalists centred around 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. He built some of the earliest Gregorian telescopes, observed the rotations of Mars and Jupiter and, based on his observations of fossils, was an early proponent of biological evolution.^[2][3] 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 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 deducing that gravity follows an inverse square law, and that such a relation governs the motions of the planets, an idea which was subsequently developed by Newton.^[4] 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.

Life and works[link]

Hooke's microscope, from an engraving in Micrographia.

Much of what is known of Hooke's early life comes from an autobiography that he commenced in 1696, but was not completed. This was referenced by Richard Waller in his introduction to The Posthumous Works of Robert Hooke, M.D. S.R.S., printed in 1705. The work of Waller, along with John Ward's Lives of the Gresham Professors and John Aubrey's Brief Lives, form the major near-contemporaneous biographical accounts of Hooke.

Early life[link]

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.^[5] Their father John was a Church of England priest, the curate of Freshwater's Church of All Saints,^[6] 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.

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).

On his father's death in 1648, Robert was left a sum of forty pounds^[5][7] 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, 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. Busby. Hooke quickly mastered Latin and Greek,^[7] made some study of Hebrew, and mastered Euclid's Elements.^[7] Here, too, he embarked on his life-long study of mechanics.

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".

Oxford[link]

Robert Boyle

In 1653, Hooke (who had also undertaken a course of twenty lessons on the organ) secured a chorister's place at Christ Church, Oxford.^[8] 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.^[9] He did not take his Master of Arts until 1662 or 1663. 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.

Hooke himself characterised his Oxford days as the foundation of his life-long 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."^[10]

It is known that Hooke had a particularly keen eye, and was an adept mathematician, neither of which applied to Boyle. Gunther suggests 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.

A chance surviving copy of Willis' pioneering De anima brutorum, a gift 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.

Watch Balance Spring[link]

Christiaan Huygens

Anchor escapement

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 Riccioli, and going on to study both gravitation and the mechanics of timekeeping. 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. There is substantial evidence to state with reasonable confidence, as Ward, Aubrey, Waller and others all do, that Hooke developed the balance spring independently of and some fifteen years before Huygens, who published his own work in Journal de Scavans in February 1675. 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."^[11] Derham also attributes it to Hooke.^[12]

Royal Society[link]

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.

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.^[13]

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 200 ft long (61 m).

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.^[14]

In 1663 and 1664, Hooke produced his microscopical observations, subsequently collated in Micrographia in 1665.

On 20 March 1664, Hooke succeeded Arthur Dacres as Gresham Professor of Geometry. Hooke received the degree of "Doctor of Physic" in December 1691.^[15]

Personality and disputes[link]

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 over credit for the watch escapement is another well-known example. 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 life of Wren, Parentalis, 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 of Robert Gunther and Margaret Espinasse. After a long period of relative obscurity he has now been recognized as one of the most important scientists of his age.^[16]

He 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.

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.

Diagram of a louse from Hooke's Micrographia

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."^[17] 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."^[18] Sullivan wrote that Hooke was "positively unscrupulous" and possessing an "uneasy apprehensive vanity" in dealings with Newton.^[19] Manuel used the phrase "cantankerous, envious, vengeful" in his description.^[20] More described Hooke having both a "cynical temperament" and a "caustic tongue."^[21] Andrade was more sympathetic, but still used the adjectives "difficult", "suspicious", and "irritable" in describing Hooke.^[22]

The publication of Hooke's diary in 1935^[23] 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.".^[24] 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.

Robert Hooke spent his life largely on the Isle of Wight, at Oxford, and in London. He never married, but his diary shows that he was not without affections, and more, for others. On 3 March 1703, Hooke died in London, having amassed a sizable sum of money, which was found in his room at Gresham College. He was buried at St Helen's Bishopsgate, but the precise location of his grave is unknown.

Science[link]

Hooke's drawing of a flea

Mechanics[link]

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.^[25]

Cell structure of Cork by Hooke

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.

Hooke's microscope

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.^[26]

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.^[27][28]

Gravitation[link]

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 of 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, in his Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind,^[29] 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...."

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.

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".^[30] Hooke clearly postulated mutual attractions between the Sun and planets, in a way that increased with nearness to the attracting body.

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.^[31] 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").^[30]

In November 1679, Hooke initiated a remarkable exchange of letters with Newton^[32] (of which the full text is now published).^[33] Hooke's ostensible purpose was to tell Newton that Hooke had been appointed to manage the Royal Society's correspondence.^[34] 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.^[35] 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."^[36] (Hooke's inference about the velocity was actually incorrect)^[37]

In 1686, when the first book of Newton's 'Principia' was presented to the Royal Society, Hooke claimed that Newton had had from him 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.^[33]

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".^[38] 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.^[39] 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.^[33] 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".^[33]

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.^[40] 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."^[33]

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".^[41][42]

Microscopy[link]

In 1665 Hooke published Micrographia, a book describing microscopic and telescopic observations, and 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 monks' cells. 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 Washington, DC.

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 widely understood, if at all, in the seventeenth century. Hooke went on to conclude that respiration also involves a specific component of the air.^[43] 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".^[44]

Drawings of the Moon and the Pleiades from Hooke's Micrographia

Palaeontology[link]

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 fossilized 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.^[45] 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.^[46]

Astronomy[link]

Hooke noted the shadows (a and b) cast by both the globe and the rings on each other in this drawing of Saturn.

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.^[47] Gamma Draconis was the same star James Bradley used in 1725 in discovering the aberration of light.

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.^[48] Hooke also was an early observer of the rings of Saturn,^[49] and discovered one of the first observed double-star systems, Gamma Arietis, in 1664.^[50]

Memory[link]

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 mechanistic model of human memory which would bear little resemblance to the mainly philosophical models before it.^[51] This model would address the components of encoding, memory capacity, repetition, retrieval, and forgetting—some with surprising modern accuracy.^[52] This work, overlooked for nearly 200 years would share a variety of similarities with Richard Semons's work of 1919/1923, both assuming memories were physical and located in the brain.^[53][54][55] 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.^[52] 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 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.

Architecture[link]

The church at Willen, Milton Keynes.

Portrait thought for a time to be Hooke, but almost certainly Jan Baptist van Helmont.

Hooke was Surveyor to the City of London and chief assistant of Christopher Wren. Hooke helped Wren rebuild London after the Great Fire in 1666, and also worked on designing London's Monument to the fire, the Royal Greenwich Observatory, Montagu House in Bloomsbury, and the infamous Bethlem Royal Hospital (which became known as 'Bedlam'). Other buildings designed by Hooke include The Royal College of Physicians (1679), Ragley Hall in Warwickshire, and the parish church 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's diaries, the most frequently cited eyewitness account of the Great Fire of London.^[56]

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.

For an extensive study of Hooke's architectural work, see the book by Cooper.^[57]

Likenesses[link]

No authenticated portrait of Robert Hooke exists, a situation sometimes attributed to the heated conflicts between Hooke and Isaac Newton. 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.

Time magazine published a portrait, supposedly of Hooke, in its 3 July 1939 issue. However, when the source was traced by Ashley Montagu, it was found to lack a verifiable connection to Hooke. Moreover, Montagu found that contemporary written descriptions of Hooke's appearance agreed with one another, but that neither matched Time's alleged picture of him.^[58]

In 2003, historian Lisa Jardine claimed that a recently discovered portrait was of Hooke,^[59] but this claim was disproved by William Jensen of the University of Cincinnati.^[60] The portrait identified by Jardine, in fact, depicts the Flemish scholar Jan Baptist van Helmont.

Other possible likenesses of Hooke include the following:

• A seal used by Hooke displays an unusual profile portrait of a man's head, which some have argued portrays Hooke.
• The engraved frontispiece to the 1728 edition of Chambers' Cyclopedia shows a drawing of a bust of Robert Hooke.^[61] The extent to which the drawing is based on an actual work of art is unknown.
• A memorial window^[62] 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.

In 2003 history painter Rita Greer embarked on a self-funded project to memorialize Hooke. The Rita Greer Robert Hooke project aimed to produce credible images of him, both painted and drawn, that fitted his contemporary descriptions drawn from two sources: John Aubrey^[63] and Richard Waller.^[64] 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.^{[65][66][67][68][69][70][71]}

Commemorations[link]

• 3514 Hooke, an asteroid (1971 UJ)
• Craters on the Moon and on Mars are named in his honour.
• The Hooke Medal^[72]
• Robert Hooke Science center St. John Smith Square Westminster School London
• New memorials to Robert Hooke 2005 - 2009

See also[link]

• Anchor escapement
• Catenary
• Elasticity (physics)
• Great red spot
• Hooke's atom
• List of astronomical instrument makers
• Mechanics
• Optical microscope
• Reticle (crosshair)
• Sash window
• Shadowgraph
• The Boyle-Hooke plaque in Oxford
• Universal joint

Notes[link]

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Further reading[link]

• Andrade, E. N. De C. (1950). "Wilkins Lecture: Robert Hooke". Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences 137 (887): 153–187. Bibcode 1950RSPSB.137..153A. DOI:10.1098/rspb.1950.0029. http://www.jstor.org/pss/82545. 
• Aubrey, John (1898). Clark, Andrew. ed. Brief Lives. Oxford: Clarendon Press. pp. 409–416. http://books.google.com/?id=cGZdVb2Cj3AC&printsec=frontcover&dq=john+aubrey#PPA409,M1. Retrieved 11 September 2009. 
• Bennett, Jim; Michael Cooper, Michael Hunter, Lisa Jardine (2003). London's Leonardo: The Life and Work of Robert Hooke. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-852579-6. 
• Chapman, Allan (2004). England's Leonardo: Robert Hooke and the Seventeenth-century Scientific Revolution. Institute of Physics Publishing. ISBN 0-7503-0987-3. 
• Chapman, Allan; Paul Kent (eds.) (2005). Robert Hooke and the English Renaissance. Gravewing. ISBN 0-85244-587-3. 
• Cooper, Michael (2003). 'A More Beautiful City': Robert Hooke and the Rebuilding of London after the Great Fire. Sutton Publishing Ltd.. ISBN [[Special:BookSources/0-7509-2959-0|0-7509-2959-0]]. 
• Cooper, Michael; Michael Hunter (2006). Robert Hooke: Tercentennial Studies. Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate. 
• 'Espinasse, Margaret (1956). Robert Hooke. London: William Heinemann Ltd.. 
• Gunther, Robert (ed.) (1923-67). Early Science in Oxford. 7. privately printed. 
• Hall, A. R. (1951). "Robert Hooke and Horology". Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 8 (2): 167–177. DOI:10.1098/rsnr.1951.0016. 
• Hooke, Robert (1635–1703). Micrographia: or some physiological descriptions of minute bodies made by magnifying glasses with observations and inquiries thereupon...
• Hooke, Robert (1935). Robinson, H. W.; Adams, W.. eds. The Diary of Robert Hooke, M.A., M.D., F.R.S., 1672–1680. London: Taylor & Francis. 
• Inwood, Stephen (2002). The Man Who Knew Too Much. Pan. ISBN 0-330-48829-5. (Published in the US as The Forgotten Genius)
• Stevenson, Christine (February 2005). "Robert Hooke, Monuments and Memory". Art History 28 (1): 43–73. DOI:10.1111/j.0141-6790.2005.00453.x. 
• Waller, Richard (1705). The Posthumous Works of Robert Hooke, M.D. S.R.S.. London: Sam. Smith and Benj. Walford. 

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Robert Hooke

Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article Hooke, Robert.

• UCMP – Robert Hooke (1635–1703)
• The Monument – Dr. Robert Hooke
• Robert Hooke, hosted by Westminster School
• Micrographia
  • Hooke's Micrographia, at Project Gutenberg (downloadable collections, including searchable ASCII text and book as complete html document with images)
  • Hooke's Micrographia, at Linda Hall Library
• A timeline of Hooke's life
• England's Leonardo, a lecture on Robert Hooke
• An engraved bust of Robert Hooke
• "Robert Boyle and Robert Hooke". Archived from the original on 2007-09-26. http://web.archive.org/web/20070926235455/http://archive.museophile.org/ox/univ-col/boyle-hooke.html. 
• Lost manuscript of Robert Hooke discovered – from The Guardian
• Manuscript bought for The Royal Society – from The Guardian
• A Panoramic Virtual Tour of Hooke's Church at Willen – by Peter Loud
• Exploring our archives, a blog by researchers at the Royal Society exploring Hooke's lost manuscript
• Westfall, Richard S.. "Robert Hooke". Rice University (The Galileo Project). http://galileo.rice.edu/Catalog/NewFiles/hooke.html. Retrieved 16 February 2008. 
• Cooper, Michael (11 May 2008). "Now that the dust has settled: A view of Robert Hooke post-2003". http://www.gresham.ac.uk/event.asp?PageId=45&EventId=799. Retrieved 22 December 2008.  – A 60-minute presentation by Prof. Michael Cooper, with links to slides, audio, video, and a transcript, with references
• Moses Pitt, Robert Hooke and the English Atlas

Michael Jerome Cooper (born April 15, 1956) is an American basketball coach and retired professional player. He is the head coach of the USC Women of Troy college basketball team.^[1] He is a former player in the National Basketball Association (NBA) who spent his entire career with the Los Angeles Lakers,^[2] and has coached in both the NBA and WNBA.^[3] Michael Cooper is the only person to win a championship, as either a coach or a player, in the NBA, WNBA, and the NBA Development League.^{[citation needed]}

Early career[link]

Born in Los Angeles, California, he attended Pasadena City College before transferring to the University of New Mexico. He played for the New Mexico Lobos for two seasons, 1976–78,^[4] and was named first team All-Western Athletic Conference. In his senior season the Lobos won the WAC title, with Cooper averaging 16.3 points, 5.7 rebounds and 4.2 assists per game.

Professional career[link]

Drafted out of New Mexico by the Lakers in the third round of the 1978 NBA Draft (60th overall),^[5] "Coop" became an integral part of the "Showtime" Lakers teams of the 1980s with his defensive skills. In a twelve-year career, he was named to eight NBA All Defensive Teams, including five First Teams. He won the NBA Defensive Player of the Year Award in 1987. He, along with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Magic Johnson, was a member of five Lakers championship teams in 1980, 1982, 1985, 1987 and 1988.^[6]

At 6 ft 5 in (1.96 m), 174 lb (77 kg), the rail-thin Cooper known for his knee-high socks, played shooting guard, small forward, and point guard, although his defensive assignment was usually the other team's best shooter at the 2 or 3 position. Larry Bird has said that Cooper was the best defender he faced.^[7] For his career, Cooper averaged 8.9 points, 4.2 assists, 3.2 rebounds, 1.2 steals, and 0.6 blocks per game. A popular player among Lakers fans, home crowds were known to chant, "Coooooooop" whenever he controlled the ball, and the Lakers sometimes ran an alley-oop play for him that was dubbed the "Coop-a-loop."^[8] Leaving the team after the 1989-90 season, he was ranked among the club's all-time top 10 in three-point field goals (428), games played (873), total minutes played (23,635), steals (1033), blocked shots (523), assists (3,666), defensive rebounds (2,028), offensive rebounds (741) and free throw percentage (.833).

He then played for the 1990-91 season in Italy for Pallacanestro Virtus Roma in the Italian Serie A, averaging 15.8 points, 6.1 rebounds, 1.9 steals, 1.8 assists, and 0.3 blocks per game.

Coaching career[link]

Following his playing career, he served as Special Assistant to Lakers' general manager Jerry West for three years before joining the Lakers' coaching staff in March 1994 under Magic Johnson, then with Del Harris from 1994-97. He became an assistant coach of the WNBA's Los Angeles Sparks in 1999, and helped the team reach the playoffs for the first time in franchise history, with a record of 20-12.

He was named the Sparks' head coach in November 1999, and the Sparks' record quickly improved, as they finished 28-4 in their 2000 campaign. Cooper was named the WNBA Coach of the Year for his efforts. The Sparks followed with consecutive WNBA Championships in 2001 and 2002, but were denied a third straight WNBA title by losing to the Detroit Shock in 2003.

After the Sacramento Monarchs ended the Sparks' run in the first round of the 2004 WNBA Playoffs, Cooper took a job as an assistant coach under Jeff Bzdelik with the Denver Nuggets. After 24 games, Bzedlik was fired, and Cooper was named the Nuggets' interim head coach.^[9] He remained interim head coach until George Karl was brought in to coach the team about a month later and served as a scout for the Nuggets the remainder of the season.

Cooper was the head coach for The Albuquerque Thunderbirds for two years (2006–2007). In 2007, Cooper left the Thunderbirds after coaching them to the National Basketball Association Development League Championship in 2006. Cooper has since returned to coaching in the WNBA as the head coach of the Los Angeles Sparks.

In May 2009, Cooper was named the head coach for the University of Southern California's Women of Troy Basketball Team.[1]

See also[link]

• List of National Basketball Association career playoff steals leaders

Notes[link]

External links[link]

• Michael Cooper at Basketball-Reference.com

Renato Andrés Ramos Madriaga (born 12 February 1979) is a Chilean footballer, who plays as a striker for Primera A side Universidad de Concepción.

Club career[link]

Early career[link]

Ramos began his career in Chile with Everton de Viña del Mar, at that time of Primera B. He then left Everton and joined Unión Española of the first division of his country. He played two seasons in that team, all in the first division.

Ramos then was followed by Universidad de Concepción in 2003, in where was a frequently player in the starting lineup, which allowed him return to Everton. In his return, his greatest achievement was put end to José María Buljubasich's record of 1,352 minutes without conceding a goal. In 2006, he was signed by Deportes Antofagasta, in where was goalscorer of the team.

In December 2006, was confirmed that Ramos was transferred to the filial of the Mexican team UAG Tecos, Tecos B of the second division of that country. In the second semester, he was named captain of the team and scored 11 goals during the season.

Audax Italiano[link]

On 11 January 2008, was reported that Audax Italiano have signed the striker for an undisclosed fee. Ramos made his debut in the opening match of the 2008 Clausura tournament against Deportes La Serena in a 0–0 draw. On 7 February, the player made his first appearance for Copa Libertadores in his career against Boyacá Chicó. He scored his first goal at his club's fourth appearance in a 4–1 win over Huachipato.

After one month without play, on 10 April 2008, Ramos scored an historic goal at the 78th minute of game against São Paulo, that ended in a 1–0 win thanks for to him. After of this goal, the player took hold in the first team.^[1]

Bolívar[link]

On 10 July 2008, Ramos signed for the Bolivian side Bolívar in a three-year contract. His first goal in the first division of that country was on his debut against San José in the first week of the season. Their first international goals for the club were against LDU Quito at the Copa Sudamericana's first round, being his second the most fastest goal of that tournament a the minute of game in a 2–1 home win.

After the club's elimination at Copa Sudamericana, Ramos started to make an offensive duo in the attack with his teammate Joaquín Botero. In the 2008 Bolivian tournament semifinals, Ramos' fifth and decisive penalty was stopped by the keeper of Real Potosí, ultimately resulting in Potosí advancing to the finals. Shortly after, he was released of the club.

Ñublense[link]

On 21 December 2008, Ramos signed for Chilean side Ñublense a one-year contract.^[2]

Universidad de Concepción[link]

On 2 June 2010, Ramos was released of Ñublense, and returned to Universidad de Concepción, team in where he already played in 2003. His new club, paid US$30.000 for the 25% of the striker's rights.^[3]

References[link]

External links[link]

• BDFA Profile
• Renato Ramos at Football Lineups
• Profile at Soccerway
• ESPN Profile

Louis Pasteur
Louis Pasteur photographed by Pierre Lamy Petit
Born	(1822-12-27)December 27, 1822 Dole, Jura, Franche-Comté, France
Died	September 28, 1895(1895-09-28) (aged 72) Marnes-la-Coquette, Hauts-de-Seine, France
Nationality	French
Fields	Chemistry Microbiology
Institutions	Dijon Lycée University of Strasbourg Université Lille Nord de France École Normale Supérieure
Alma mater	École Normale Supérieure
Notable students	Charles Friedel[1]
Signature

Louis Pasteur ( /ˈluːi pæˈstɜr/, French: [lwi pastœʁ]; December 27, 1822 – September 28, 1895) was a French chemist and microbiologist born in Dole. He is remembered for his remarkable breakthroughs in the causes and preventions of diseases. His discoveries reduced mortality from puerperal fever, and he created the first vaccines for rabies and anthrax. His experiments supported the germ theory of disease. He was best known to the general public for inventing a method to stop milk and wine from causing sickness, a process that came to be called pasteurization. He is regarded as one of the three main founders of microbiology, together with Ferdinand Cohn and Robert Koch. Pasteur also made many discoveries in the field of chemistry, most notably the molecular basis for the asymmetry of certain crystals.^[2] His body lies beneath the Institute Pasteur in Paris in a spectacular vault covered in depictions of his accomplishments in Byzantine mosaics.^[3]

Biography[link]

The house in which Pasteur was born, Dole

Louis Pasteur was born on December 27, 1822, in Dole in the Jura region of France, into the family of a poor tanner. Louis grew up in the town of Arbois.^[2] He gained degrees in Letters and in Mathematical Sciences before entering the École Normale Supérieure, an elite college. After serving briefly as professor of physics at Dijon Lycée in 1848, he became professor of chemistry at the University of Strasbourg,^[2] where he met and courted Marie Laurent, daughter of the university's rector, in 1849. They were married on May 29, 1849, and together had five children, only two of whom survived to adulthood; the other three died of typhoid. These personal tragedies inspired Pasteur to try to find cures for diseases such as typhoid.

Chirality and the polarization of light[link]

Pasteur separated the left and right crystal shapes from each other to form two piles of crystals: in solution one form rotated light to the left, the other to the right, while an equal mixture of the two forms canceled each other's effect, and does not rotate the polarized light.

In Pasteur's early work as a chemist, he resolved a problem concerning the nature of tartaric acid (1848).^{[4][5][6][7][8]} A solution of this compound derived from living things (specifically, wine lees) rotated the plane of polarization of light passing through it. The mystery was that tartaric acid derived by chemical synthesis had no such effect, even though its chemical reactions were identical and its elemental composition was the same.^[9] This was the first time anyone had demonstrated chiral molecules.

Pasteur's doctoral thesis on crystallography attracted the attention of W. T. Fuillet, and he helped Pasteur garner a position of professor of chemistry at the Faculté (College) of Strasbourg.^[2]

In 1854, Pasteur was named Dean of the new Faculty of Sciences in Lille. It was on this occasion that Pasteur uttered his oft-quoted remark: "...dans les champs de l'observation, le hasard ne favorise que les esprits préparés" (In the field of observation, chance favors only the prepared mind.^[10]) In 1856, he was made administrator and director of scientific studies of the École Normale Supérieure.^[2]

Germ theory of disease[link]

Pasteur demonstrated fermentation is caused by the growth of micro-organisms, and the emergent growth of bacteria in nutrient broths is not due to spontaneous generation,^[2] but rather to biogenesis (Omne vivum ex vivo "all life is from life").

Bottle en col de cygne (swan neck duct) used by Pasteur

Institut Pasteur de Lille

He exposed boiled broths to air in vessels that contained a filter to prevent all particles from passing through to the growth medium, and even in vessels with no filter at all, with air being admitted via a long tortuous tube that would not allow dust particles to pass. Nothing grew in the broths unless the flasks were broken open; therefore, the living organisms that grew in such broths came from outside, as spores on dust, rather than spontaneously generated within the broth. This was one of the last and most important experiments disproving the theory of spontaneous generation. The experiment also supported germ theory.^[2]

While Pasteur was not the first to propose germ theory (Girolamo Fracastoro, Agostino Bassi, Friedrich Henle and others had suggested it earlier), he developed it and conducted experiments that clearly indicated its correctness and managed to convince most of Europe it was true. Today, he is often regarded as the father of germ theory and bacteriology, together with Robert Koch.^[11]

Pasteur's research also showed the growth of micro-organisms was responsible for spoiling beverages, such as beer, wine and milk. With this established, he invented a process in which liquids such as milk were heated to kill most bacteria and moulds already present within them. Claude Bernard and he completed the first test on April 20, 1862. This process was soon afterwards known as pasteurization.^[11]

Beverage contamination led Pasteur to the idea that micro-organisms infecting animals and humans cause disease. He proposed preventing the entry of micro-organisms into the human body, leading Joseph Lister to develop antiseptic methods in surgery.

In 1865, two parasitic diseases called pébrine and flacherie were killing great numbers of silkworms at Alais (now Alès). Pasteur worked several years proving it was a microbe attacking silkworm eggs which caused the disease, and eliminating this microbe within silkworm nurseries would eradicate the disease.^[2][11]

Pasteur also discovered anaerobiosis, whereby some micro-organisms can develop and live without air or oxygen, called the Pasteur effect.

Immunology and vaccination[link]

Pasteur's later work on diseases included work on chicken cholera. During this work, a culture of the responsible bacteria had spoiled and failed to induce the disease in some chickens he was infecting with the disease. Upon reusing these healthy chickens, Pasteur discovered he could not infect them, even with fresh bacteria; the weakened bacteria had caused the chickens to become immune to the disease, though they had caused only mild symptoms.^[2][11]

His assistant, Charles Chamberland (of French origin), had been instructed to inoculate the chickens after Pasteur went on holiday. Chamberland failed to do this, but instead went on holiday himself. On his return, the month-old cultures made the chickens unwell, but instead of the infection's being fatal, as it usually was, the chickens recovered completely. Chamberland assumed an error had been made, and wanted to discard the apparently faulty culture when Pasteur stopped him. Pasteur guessed the recovered animals now might be immune to the disease, as were the animals at Eure-et-Loir that had recovered from anthrax.^[12]

In the 1870s, he applied this immunization method to anthrax, which affected cattle, and aroused interest in combating other diseases.

Louis Pasteur in his laboratory, painting by A. Edelfeldt in 1885

Pasteur publicly claimed he had made the anthrax vaccine by exposing the bacilli to oxygen. His laboratory notebooks, now in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, in fact show Pasteur used the method of rival Jean-Joseph-Henri Toussaint, a Toulouse veterinary surgeon, to create the anthrax vaccine.^[9][13] This method used the oxidizing agent potassium dichromate. Pasteur's oxygen method did eventually produce a vaccine but only after he had been awarded a patent on the production of an anthrax vaccine.

The notion of a weak form of a disease causing immunity to the virulent version was not new; this had been known for a long time for smallpox. Inoculation with smallpox was known to result in far less scarring, and greatly reduced mortality, in comparison with the naturally acquired disease. Edward Jenner had also discovered vaccination, using cowpox to give cross-immunity to smallpox (in 1796), and by Pasteur's time this had generally replaced the use of actual smallpox material in inoculation. The difference between smallpox vaccination and anthrax or chicken cholera vaccination was that the weakened form of the latter two disease organisms had been "generated artificially", so a naturally weak form of the disease organism did not need to be found.

This discovery revolutionized work in infectious diseases, and Pasteur gave these artificially weakened diseases the generic name of "vaccines", in honour of Jenner's discovery. Pasteur produced the first vaccine for rabies by growing the virus in rabbits, and then weakening it by drying the affected nerve tissue.

The rabies vaccine was initially created by Emile Roux, a French doctor and a colleague of Pasteur who had been working with a killed vaccine produced by desiccating the spinal cords of infected rabbits. The vaccine had been tested only on 11 dogs before its first human trial.^[2][9]

This vaccine was first used on 9-year old Joseph Meister, on July 6, 1885, after the boy was badly mauled by a rabid dog.^[9] This was done at some personal risk for Pasteur, since he was not a licensed physician and could have faced prosecution for treating the boy. After consulting with colleagues, Pasteur decided to go ahead with the treatment. Meister did not contract the disease. It is sometimes said that Pasteur saved the boy's life, but this cannot be maintained with certainty, since the risk of contracting rabies after such an exposure is estimated at around 15%.^[14] Nonetheless, Pasteur was hailed as a hero and the legal matter was not pursued. The treatment's success laid the foundations for the manufacture of many other vaccines. The first of the Pasteur Institutes was also built on the basis of this achievement.^[9]

Legal risk was not the only kind Pasteur undertook. In The Story of San Michele, Axel Munthe writes of the rabies vaccine research:

Louis Pasteur portrait in his later years

Because of his study in germs, Pasteur encouraged doctors to sanitize their hands and equipment before surgery. Prior to this, few doctors or their assistants practiced these procedures.

Allegations of deception[link]

In 1995, the centennial of the death of Louis Pasteur, the New York Times ran an article titled "Pasteur's Deception". After having thoroughly read Pasteur's lab notes, the science historian Gerald L. Geison declared Pasteur had given a misleading account of the preparation of the anthrax vaccine used in the experiment at Pouilly-le-Fort.^[15] Max Perutz published a vigorous defense of Pasteur in the New York Review of Books.^[16]

Faith and spirituality[link]

Although his grandson, Louis Pasteur Vallery-Radot, wrote that Pasteur had only kept from his Catholic background a spiritualism without religious practice,^[17] Catholic observers often said Louis Pasteur remained throughout his whole life an ardent Christian, and his son-in-law, in perhaps the most complete biography of Louis Pasteur, writes:

Maurice Vallery-Radot, grandson of the brother of the son-in-law of Pasteur and outspoken Catholic, also holds that Pasteur fundamentally remained Catholic.^[19] According to both Pasteur Vallery-Radot and Maurice Vallery-Radot, the following well-known quotation attributed to Pasteur is apocryphal:^[20] "The more I know, the more nearly is my faith that of the Breton peasant. Could I but know all I would have the faith of a Breton peasant's wife"^[2]. According to Maurice Vallery-Radot,^[21] the false quotation appeared for the first time shortly after the death of Pasteur.^[22]

Principal works[link]

Pasteur's principal works are: "Etudes sur le Vin", (1866); "Etudes sur le Vinaigre" (1868); "Etudes sur la Maladie des Vers à Soie" (2 vols., 1870); "Quelques Réflexions sur la Science en France" (1871); "Etudes sur la Bière" (1876); "Les Microbes organisés, leur rôle dans la Fermentation, la Putréfaction et la Contagion'" (1878); "Discours de Réception de M.L. Pasteur à l'Académie Française" (1882); and "Traitement de la Rage" (1886).^[2]

Honours and final days[link]

Vulitsya Pastera or Pasteur Street in Odessa, Ukraine

Pasteur's death occurred in 1895, near Paris, from complications of a series of strokes that had started in 1868.^[9] He died while listening to the story of St Vincent de Paul, whom he admired and sought to emulate.^[2] He was buried in the Cathedral of Notre Dame, but his remains were reinterred in a crypt in the Institut Pasteur, Paris, where he is remembered for his life-saving work.

Pasteur won the Leeuwenhoek medal, microbiology's highest Dutch honor in Arts and Sciences, in 1895. He was a Grand Croix of the Legion of Honor–one of only 75 in all of France. Both Institute Pasteur and Université Louis Pasteur were named after him.

On June 8 1886, the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II awarded Pasteur with the Order of the Medjidie (I. Class) and 10000 Ottoman liras.^[23]

In many localities worldwide, streets are named in his honor. For example, in the USA: the medical school at Stanford University, Palo Alto and Irvine, California, Boston, Massachusetts and Polk, Florida, adjacent to the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio; Jonquière, Québec; San Salvador de Jujuy and Buenos Aires (Argentina), Great Yarmouth in Norfolk, in the United Kingdom, Jericho and Wulguru in Queensland, (Australia); Phnom Penh in Cambodia; Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam; Batna in Algeria; Bandung in Indonesia, Tehran in Iran, adjacent to the Odessa State Medical University in Odessa, Ukraine; Milan in Italy and Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca and Timişoara in Romania. A large university hospital is named after him in Košice, Slovakia.

In his honor, a statue of him located on the campus of San Rafael High School in San Rafael, California. Also, there is a Pasteur institute in Ootacamund, a hill station in south India, which is involved in vaccine trials and also rabies diagnosis.

Statements[link]

In his triumphal lecture at the Sorbonne in 1864, Pasteur said "Never will the doctrine of spontaneous generation recover from the mortal blow struck by this simple experiment" (referring to his swan-neck flask experiment wherein he proved fermenting micro-organisms would not form in a flask containing fermentable juice until an entry path was created for them).^[9][24][25]

Legacy[link]

• Avenue Louis Pasteur in the Longwood Medical and Academic Area in Boston, Massachusetts is named in his honor in the French manner with "Avenue" preceding the name of the dedicatee.^[26]
• The Lycée Pasteur in Neuilly-sur-Seine is named after him.
• The Avenue Pasteur in Saigon, Vietnam, is one of the few streets in that city to retain its French name.

Sculpture in San Francisco[link]

A bronze bust of Pasteur resides on the French Campus of Kaiser Permanente's San Francisco Medical Center in San Francisco, California. The sculpture was designed by Harriet G. Moore and cast in 1984 by Artworks Foundry. The bronze bust is approximately 23 x 16 x 12 inches in size and resides on a black granite pedestal which is approximately 50 x 19 x 16 inches. It was a gift of Constantine Raises. The lower front of the sculpture has a copyright symbol and HARRIET G. MOORE 84 inscribed on it. A plaque on the base states:

LOUIS PASTEUR

1822-1895

DONATED BY

CONSTANTINE RAISES - 1984

HARRIET MOORE, SCULPTOR

REDEDICATION BY

FRENCH HERITAGE ALLIANCE 1991

In 1992 the Save Outdoor Sculpture! program surveyed the work and described it as being well maintained.^[27]

See also[link]

• Pasteurization
• Infection control
• Infectious disease
• Modern medicine
• Pasteur Institute
• The Story of Louis Pasteur (a 1936 biographical film)

References[link]

Further reading[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Louis Pasteur

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Louis Pasteur

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Louis Pasteur

Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article Pasteur, Louis.

• The Institut Pasteur – Foundation Dedicated to the prevention and treatment of diseases through biological research, education and public health activities
• The Pasteur Foundation – A US nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting the mission of the Institut Pasteur in Paris. Full archive of newsletters available online containing examples of US Tributes to Louis Pasteur.
• Pasteur's Papers on the Germ Theory
• The Life and Work of Louis Pasteur, Pasteur Brewing
• The Pasteur Galaxy
• Louis Pasteur featured on the 5 French Franc banknote from 1966.
• Germ Theory and Its Applications to Medicine and Surgery, 1878
• Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) profile, AccessExcellence.org

The complete work of Pasteur, BNF (Bibliothèque nationale de France)

• Pasteur Œuvre tome 1 – Dissymétrie moléculairePDF (French)
• Pasteur Œuvre tome 2 – Fermentations et générations dites spontanéesPDF (French)
• Comptes rendus de l’Académie des sciences Articles published by Pasteur (French)