London's Leonardo

2003 sees the tercentenary of the death of Robert Hooke, one of the early leading lights of the Royal Society. The book consists of four linked essays on his career, his instruments, his work as a scientist and his personal life. This gives an excellent introduction to the life and work of a remarkable polymath, whose activities ranged from geometry, invention, city surveying, lecturing and experimenting. One of his less successful experiments, as Lisa Jardine shows, was the ingestion of countless remedies that seemed to lead to an inexorable decline in his health, although the pace and range of his activity must have induced considerable stress, even in those days! A