The Curious Life of Robert Hooke

“Thrilling…Jardine comes up with some startling discoveries…[and] is excellent at placing Wren in the historical and intellectual context of his time.” - Daily Telegraph (London)

“Imaginative, fluent and scholarly … it helps round out our understanding of a man who is both famous and simultaneously unknown, even unknowable.” - London Times

”[Jardine’s] well-documented presentation of Hooke’s relations with the scientific community of a late 17th-century London he helped to reshape is a tour de force - social history as well as biography.” - New York Times Book Review

“Hook was undoubtedly one of the great polymaths of his age. From chemistry and clock making to architecture and inventing, mathematics and monuments, the recklessly unspecialized Hooke combined practical genius with a formidable intellect…. Jardine’s biography… is a wonderful testament to … [Hooke’s] unacknowledged greatness, one that spurs us to grant Hooke the recognition he surely deserves.” - Boston Globe

“First rate … both learned and delightfully readable.” - St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“Fascinating … Jardine takes a complex view, according Hooke with the respect and dignity that eluded him for so long …[and] with this compelling and empathetic portrait, she succeeds in making a convincing case for his place in history …[as] a founding father in Europe’s scientific revolution.” - Los Angeles Times

“Sure to become the standard life of Hooke.” - Publishers Weekly

”[Jardine’s] lucid and easy-reading prose paints a vivid portrait of a curiously overlooked historical figure.” - Washington Post Book World

“Hooke was one of the great public figures of seventeenth-century London … [Jardine] places him squarely at the center of the intellectual ferment of his time.” - Natural History Magazine

”[Jardine] … convincingly restores [Hooke] to a prominent position in 17th century cultural life, as one of the brilliant polymaths who made London a capital of modern science and as a leader among the dedicated citizens who raised their city from the ashes.” - Newsday

Lisa Jardine, Commander of the Order of the British Empire, is the director of the Centre for Editing Lives and Letters, the centenary professor of Renaissance Studies at Queen Mary, University of London, and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society. She lives with her husband and three children in London.

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