Eureka! Lost manuscript found in cupboard
· Royal Society fears losing £1m minutes at auction
· Handwritten papers chart birth of modern science
Ian Sample, science correspondent
Thursday February 9, 2006
The Guardian
A long-lost 17th century manuscript charting the birth of modern science has been found gathering dust in a cupboard in a Hampshire home. Filled with crabby italics and acerbic asides, the 520 or so yellowing and stained pages are the handwritten minutes of the Royal Society as recorded by the brilliant scientist Robert Hooke, one of the society's original fellows and curator of experiments.
The notes describe in detail some of the most astounding and outlandish scientific thinking from meetings of the society between 1661 to 1682. There is the very earliest work with microscopes, confirming the first sightings of sperm and micro-organisms. There is correspondence with Sir Isaac Newton and Sir Christopher Wren over the nature of gravity, with the latter's proposal to fire bullets into the air to see where they might drop. And there is a page that lays to rest the bitter controversy over who designed the watch that would eventually lead to the first measurements of longitude.
The discovery was made by chance during a routine evaluation at the house by Bonhams, the auctioneers. The manuscript had been kept in a cupboard for 50 years and was only shown to the valuer as he was leaving. "I thought it must be too good to be true. The first page I saw was headed: 'President Sir Christopher Wren in the chair' and I knew I was looking at the vanished minutes of the Royal Society," said Felix Pryor, manuscript consultant for Bonhams. "Then there were all these names: Wren, Leibniz, Aubrey, Evelyn, Newton. Then I began to recognise the handwriting of Robert Hooke. It was a magical moment."
The delight of scientists and historians has quickly turned to anxiety, however. The manuscript is to be put up for auction in London on March 28 and is expected to sell for more than £1m, prompting Lord Rees of Ludlow, the president of the Royal Society to appeal for a "white knight" to buy the papers so they can be returned to the society's archive.
"It is a great pity that the Royal Society cannot itself afford to purchase them so that they could be restored to our collection of documents, from which they were removed at some point during our early history," he said.
Lisa Jardine, professor of renaissance studies at Queen Mary, University of London, and biographer of Hooke, said: "It would be a tragedy if it was to go elsewhere. This is the last bit of the jigsaw for the society's archive, which is otherwise intact from 1660. There are Hooke enthusiasts out there and some are very wealthy and the calamity would be if it were to end up in one of their private collections where the broader community would be unable to study it."
Minutes from December 1679 describe correspondence between Hooke and Newton proposing an experiment to confirm the rotation of the Earth. The notes include a suggestion from Sir Christopher Wren, Hooke's closest friend, to test the hypothesis by "shooting of a bullet upwards at a certaine angle from the perpendicular round every way - thereby to see whether the bullets soe shot would all fall in a perfect circle".
Hooke became embroiled in a bitter controversy himself that remained a mystery until the new manuscript emerged. In 1675, the Dutch physicist Christiaan Huygens claimed to have designed a watch that, unusually, kept the correct time for days on end, thanks to tiny springs in the mechanism. Such a watch was precisely what was needed if longitude was ever to be measured.
On hearing of Huygens' claim, Hooke was incensed, having shown just such a watch to the Royal Society five years earlier. He was convinced someone had leaked his design to Huygens and in an effort to prove it, he scoured the notes of the society's minutes but found no record.
In the latest manuscript, Hooke describes painstakingly working through the draft minutes of the society's meetings in search of evidence. He found that on June 23 1670, his predecessor, Henry Oldenburg, had written: "The curator [Hooke] produced a pocketwatch of a new contrivance devized by himself, which he affirmed should goe as equally as a pendullum, and without stopping, and might be made to goe for 8 days."
By mistake, Oldenburg failed to record the event in the finalised minutes, and the design was probably leaked by accident some time later.
The irony is that Hooke tore the page out of the draft minutes and stuck it in his own notes, so historians were never able to verify his claim. "It was all the proof we needed," said Prof Jardine.
Michael Hunter, professor of history at Birkbeck College, London, said: "It is an extraordinary discovery, filling a gap in the documentation of the early Royal Society and including details of discussions at various meetings that have hitherto been unknown."
guardian.co.uk
· Royal Society fears losing £1m minutes at auction
· Handwritten papers chart birth of modern science
Ian Sample, science correspondent
Thursday February 9, 2006
The Guardian
A long-lost 17th century manuscript charting the birth of modern science has been found gathering dust in a cupboard in a Hampshire home. Filled with crabby italics and acerbic asides, the 520 or so yellowing and stained pages are the handwritten minutes of the Royal Society as recorded by the brilliant scientist Robert Hooke, one of the society's original fellows and curator of experiments.
The notes describe in detail some of the most astounding and outlandish scientific thinking from meetings of the society between 1661 to 1682. There is the very earliest work with microscopes, confirming the first sightings of sperm and micro-organisms. There is correspondence with Sir Isaac Newton and Sir Christopher Wren over the nature of gravity, with the latter's proposal to fire bullets into the air to see where they might drop. And there is a page that lays to rest the bitter controversy over who designed the watch that would eventually lead to the first measurements of longitude.
The discovery was made by chance during a routine evaluation at the house by Bonhams, the auctioneers. The manuscript had been kept in a cupboard for 50 years and was only shown to the valuer as he was leaving. "I thought it must be too good to be true. The first page I saw was headed: 'President Sir Christopher Wren in the chair' and I knew I was looking at the vanished minutes of the Royal Society," said Felix Pryor, manuscript consultant for Bonhams. "Then there were all these names: Wren, Leibniz, Aubrey, Evelyn, Newton. Then I began to recognise the handwriting of Robert Hooke. It was a magical moment."
The delight of scientists and historians has quickly turned to anxiety, however. The manuscript is to be put up for auction in London on March 28 and is expected to sell for more than £1m, prompting Lord Rees of Ludlow, the president of the Royal Society to appeal for a "white knight" to buy the papers so they can be returned to the society's archive.
"It is a great pity that the Royal Society cannot itself afford to purchase them so that they could be restored to our collection of documents, from which they were removed at some point during our early history," he said.
Lisa Jardine, professor of renaissance studies at Queen Mary, University of London, and biographer of Hooke, said: "It would be a tragedy if it was to go elsewhere. This is the last bit of the jigsaw for the society's archive, which is otherwise intact from 1660. There are Hooke enthusiasts out there and some are very wealthy and the calamity would be if it were to end up in one of their private collections where the broader community would be unable to study it."
Minutes from December 1679 describe correspondence between Hooke and Newton proposing an experiment to confirm the rotation of the Earth. The notes include a suggestion from Sir Christopher Wren, Hooke's closest friend, to test the hypothesis by "shooting of a bullet upwards at a certaine angle from the perpendicular round every way - thereby to see whether the bullets soe shot would all fall in a perfect circle".
Hooke became embroiled in a bitter controversy himself that remained a mystery until the new manuscript emerged. In 1675, the Dutch physicist Christiaan Huygens claimed to have designed a watch that, unusually, kept the correct time for days on end, thanks to tiny springs in the mechanism. Such a watch was precisely what was needed if longitude was ever to be measured.
On hearing of Huygens' claim, Hooke was incensed, having shown just such a watch to the Royal Society five years earlier. He was convinced someone had leaked his design to Huygens and in an effort to prove it, he scoured the notes of the society's minutes but found no record.
In the latest manuscript, Hooke describes painstakingly working through the draft minutes of the society's meetings in search of evidence. He found that on June 23 1670, his predecessor, Henry Oldenburg, had written: "The curator [Hooke] produced a pocketwatch of a new contrivance devized by himself, which he affirmed should goe as equally as a pendullum, and without stopping, and might be made to goe for 8 days."
By mistake, Oldenburg failed to record the event in the finalised minutes, and the design was probably leaked by accident some time later.
The irony is that Hooke tore the page out of the draft minutes and stuck it in his own notes, so historians were never able to verify his claim. "It was all the proof we needed," said Prof Jardine.
Michael Hunter, professor of history at Birkbeck College, London, said: "It is an extraordinary discovery, filling a gap in the documentation of the early Royal Society and including details of discussions at various meetings that have hitherto been unknown."
guardian.co.uk