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Robert Hooke went to college at Oxford and there met chemist Boyle. It was Boyle who inspired him to study physics and math. In 1660, Hooke discovered his most famous physical law, his law of elasticity. This law states that an elastic object stretches in direct proportion to the amount of weight placed on it. Hooke also completed works on optics and simple harmonics before being appointed to a professorship at Gresham College in 1665. Hooke is also famous in the biological community for his observations of microscopic life. He made these observations through a handmade microscope, and his book Micrographia gained him worldwide fame. Hooke also made several important astronomical discoveries, the most interesting of which is the inverse square law of gravitation, which he discovered before Newton. However, he was never able to give any mathematical proof of the law, and therefore is not credited with the discovery of it. |