The Hooke Folio

Restoring one of the most significant finds in the history of science to our Library and Archives

Total raised: £937,074

Without the generosity of over 150 individuals and organisations, we would not have been able to acquire the Hooke folio and make it accessible to a wider public nationally and internationally. In particular, we would like to thank the Wellcome Trust for a generous donation of £394,000 towards the purchase of the folio and a further grant of up to £75,000 to make it accessible.

In January 2006, the Royal Society heard that a collection of notes by Robert Hooke FRS had been found in a cupboard in Hampshire and was going up for auction in March at Bonham's auctioneers. It was greeted as one of the most important recent discoveries in the history of science. The bulk of the material contained Hooke's annotated transcriptions of Oldenburg's meeting notes and Hooke's own rough notes of meetings during his time as Secretary of the Royal Society.

Robert Hooke was a research assistant of Robert Boyle FRS when he joined the Royal Society in 1662 as the first Curator of Experiments. In this role, the Society paid him to conduct public experiments at meetings. This makes him, in effect, the world's first professional scientist and the predecessor to the hundreds of scientists the Society funds today. He became a Fellow the following year.

Hooke's numerous achievements include Hooke's law of elasticity; Hooke's universal joint; discoveries in microscopy including the cell structure of plants (he coined the word cell) and, controversially, the invention of the spring regulator for pocket watches, an advance that Oldenburg had credited to himself.

From the start, there was tremendous concern that these notes would be purchased by a private collector, perhaps from abroad, who might restrict scholarly access. The Royal Society's President, Lord Rees of Ludlow Kt PRS, appealed for a 'white knight' to help return the papers to the Society's archive.

The response to the President's appeal was overwhelming. Within a few days dozens of Fellows and several members of the public had pledged support. As 28 March approached, the pledges kept arriving. At the same time, the Society started negotiations to try to acquire the manuscript through a private treaty sale. Then the Wellcome Trust stepped in with a dramatic major gift pledge, which brought us to a level that would be enough to pay a fair price, but there was no guarantee what the final price would be in a public auction.

With literally minutes to go before the auction was due to go ahead, the Society reached an agreement to restore the papers to the archive. The papers themselves arrived in May. In the end, over 150 donors contributed to the effort.

The Society has already started making the manuscript available to scholars, analysing the papers (for example by identifying erased or crossed out text) and using them to draw members of the public into the fascinating history of science at the Royal Society. At the Summer Science Exhibition, the papers went on public display for the first time. We are also in the process of digitising them. The Wellcome Trust has generously added to its acquisition grant with a further grant to help us with outreach projects.

To find out more about the contents of the Hooke Folio, visit the Library & Archives blog.