Micrographia: or some physiological descriptions of minute bodies made by magnifying glasses with observations and inquiries thereupon.

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Creator

Robert Hooke (1635–1703).

Title

Micrographia: or some physiological descriptions of minute bodies made by magnifying glasses with observations and inquiries thereupon.

Publisher

London: John Martyn and James Allestry,

Date

1665.

Description

In his bibliography of Robert Hooke’s work, Sir Geoffrey Keynes ranked the Micrographia of Robert Hooke “among the most important books ever published in the history of science” (Oxford, 1960, xi), and it has been described as enjoying “immediate success” (Printing and the Mind of Man, 1967, 88). Its magnificent plates illustrate Hooke’s microscopic—and telescopic—observations, and the work continues to attract the attention of scholars in a variety of fields. For example, Meghan Doherty has noted in her recent prize-winning study that when Hooke looked through a microscope, having adding “artificial Organs to the natural,” he “saw what others did not or could not,” in part because of “his early training and lifelong interest in the arts” (“Discovering the ‘true form’: Hooke’s Micrographia and the visual vocabulary of engraved portraits,” in Notes and Records: The Royal Society Journal of the History of Science, September 2012:211). Illustrations from this copy of Micrographia appeared in Doherty's article.

My copy was owned at one point by the Sion College Library; my wife and I donated it to the Department of Special Collections, Memorial Library, University of Wisconsin-Madison, as part of the Daniel and Eleanor Albert Collection.

Source

Daniel Albert