1. The Battle over Intellectual Property
NEWTON vs. HOOKE
The Battle over Intellectual Property
Connor Terry, Demetrios Giannios, Liam Collins
Scientific discovery is charged with human emotion from scientists seeking self-glory. Scientists either step on the theories of others that will not give up on them or scientists with similar theories will compete for intellectual property. Newton and Hooke’s rivalry illustrated both of these aspects in their debate over the theory of light (1672) and the exclusion of Hooke’s contributions to the law of gravitation.
Sir Isaac Newton
(1642 – 1727)
Robert Hooke
(1635 – 1703)
“…there is nothing in Mr. Hook’s Considerations wth wch I am not well contented.”
“I have perused the discourse of Mr. NEWTON about colours and refractions, and I was not a little pleased with the niceness and curiosity of his observations.” VS
Believed to be 5’ 6”
Approx. Weight – 578 Newtons
Believed to be shorter than Newton
Unknown Weight
Round 1: The Theory of Light
In 1676, Hooke stated “we began our first Discourse about light” which referred to Newton and their first battle over intellectual property.
This argument started when Newton presented his theory of light to the Royal Society in 1672.
This debate was won by Hooke not because he disproved Newton but rather his higher status in the Royal Society allowed him to discredit Newton.
Round 2: Law of Gravitation
In 1679, Hooke wrote to Newton, on behalf of the Royal Society, asking for Newton’s perspective on his hypothesis regarding gravitational attraction. In his reply, Newton did not address the hypothesis.
A year later, Hooke wrote Newton again about attraction stating, “[attraction is] a duplicate proportion to the distance…Reciprocall”, which was referring to the inverse square law. Newton denied the existence of the previous conversations with Hooke.
Newton was ultimately credited with discovering the inverse square law of gravity.
Who Won?: Outcome
Newton overshadowed Hooke. His earlier discoveries and publications, like Principia (1687) , led him to the forefront of the scientific world and converted him from a reclusive scholar to a self-assured and dictatorial bureaucrat.
Hooke had been the Royal Society’s Curator of Experiments, but after his death Newton became president where he ruled tyrannically but revived the diminishing prevalence of the Society.
Additionally, Newton’s theory of Light was published a year after Hooke’s death, in 1704.
Background on Royal Society
A scientific order chartered by King Charles II in 1660 that included the greatest scientific minds, English and foreign, of the period.
In 1665, the Royal Society published Robert Hooke’s Micrographia, in which he coined the term “cell”.
Other notable members of the Royal Society include Charles Darwin, Michael Faraday, Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill and Stephen Hawking.
Selected Bibliography
Birch, Thomas. “Robert Hooke’s Critique of Newton’s Theory of Light and Colors (Delivered 1672).” The History of the Royal Society 3 (1757): 10–15.
Chapman, Allan. England’s Leonardo: Robert Hooke and the Seventeenth-Century Scientific Revolution. Bristol: Institute of Physics Publishing, 2005.
Christianson, Gale E. Isaac Newton and the Scientific Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Cohen, Bernard. “Newton’s Debt to Hooke.” In The Birth of a New Physics. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1985.
Hellman, Han. Great Feuds in Science: Ten of the Liveliest Disputes Ever. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1998.
Westfall, Richard S. “Newton’s Reply to Hooke and the Theory of Colors.” Isis 54, no. 1 (1963): 82–96.