Reconstruction of Hooke based on verbal descriptions of his facial features. [3]

In thermodynamics, Robert Hooke (1635-1703) was an English scientist and engineer noted for building of the pneumatical engine in 1658-59 for Robert Boyle, the device which lead to the formulation of Boyle's law, the first of the gas laws. Hooke, it seems, was also responsible for the promotion of French physicist Denis Papin’s steam engine theories in England, as found in Papin’s 1690 treatise "A New Method to Obtain Very Great Motive Powers at Small Cost", particularly in Hooke’s failed efforts to dissuade English engineer Thomas Newcomen to erect a machine on Papin’s theory of making a speedy vacuum under a piston, by attempting to fault Papin’s theory. Hooke is also noted for having been one of the first, following Francis Bacon, to state that heat is motion of the parts of bodies:

“Heat being nothing else but a brisk and vehement agitation of the parts of a body.”

In 1664, Hooke had made a variety of spirit thermometers, and notably used the bulb immersed in ice water as the zero mark on the thermometer, similar to Daniel Fahrenheit (who did the same in 1724), then made further marks on the tube to represent an expansion of 1/500th of volume of the fluid in the bulb. [4]

Hooke, to note, is the 23rd most cited chemist of English chemist James Partington’s famous 1937 A Short History of Chemistry (according to name index page count). [1]

Newton-Hooke controversy
On reading English physicist Isaac Newton’s Principia, Hooke claimed that the idea of an inverse square law for gravitation had been stolen from him. Hooke, supposedly, did have such an idea independent of Newton and also realized that an object falling towards the earth had the same motion as earth falling towards the sun. Hooke’s lack of mathematical ability, supposedly, was what hindered his claim to fame.

Upon hearing this accusation, Newton, promptly removed all mention of Hooke from the Principia, and refused to have anything to do with the Royal Society, Hooke’s employer, agreeing to become president only after Hooke’s death in 1703. When Newton did become president, Hooke’s portrait hanging in the Royal Society mysteriously disappeared. [5] The inference here being that the reason that no pictures of Hooke exist in modern times, is the result of Newton.

References
1. Boyle, Robert. (1660). New Experiments: Physico-Mechanical, Touching the Spring of the Air, and its Effects: Made, for the most part, in a New Pneumatical Engine. Publisher.
2. Partington, J.R. (1957). A Short History of Chemistry. MacMillan and Co.
3. (a) Greer, Rita. (2006) "Robert Hooke (drawing)"; based on descriptions by two close friends – John Aubrey and Richard Waller. Note the popping eyes, thin face and nose, sharp chin and small mouth with a thin upper lip, also a highly intelligent appearance.
(b) No actual photo of Hooke is said to exist.
4. Moran, Jeffrey B. (2001). How Do We Know the Laws of Thermodynamics (pg. 33). The Rosen Publishing Co.
5. Segre, Gino. (2002). A Matter of Degrees - What Temperature Reveals About the Past and the Future of Our Species, Planet, and Universe (pg. 51). London: Penguin Books.

External links
● Robert Hooke – Wikipedia.