For a dozen years
I have been presenting programmes about ancient science and
inventions, and I have noticed that throughout history, breakthroughs
have behaved like buses – you wait for years, and then three or four
come along together. I’m investigating some of these ‘Eureka Years’ on
radio 4 at 11 on Wednesdays, starting with the year 1665.
In January 1665
Robert Hooke published his wonderful book Micrographia, the
world’s first scientific best-seller. Samuel Pepys wrote in his diary
that he sat up all night reading it. I have a facsimile edition, and
it is beautiful for three reasons. First it is written in English and
is easy to read, whereas most science books at that time were written
in Latin. Second Hooke was a brilliant scientist with wide interests;
he wrote about the craters on the moon as well as the lice in his
hair.
Third, and best
of all, Hooke was the first person to use a microscope for scientific
reasons and was a fine artist; so he could draw what he saw. The book
is full of superb pictures; the most dramatic is the flea, which comes
on a pull-out sheet as big as a double-page spread of the Radio Times.
Until then victims had thought fleas were little black dots that bit
you; this drawing of a hairy monster with scales and claws opened
people’s eyes to a whole new scary microworld. It is said that women
fainted at the sight.
Then 1665 was the
year that brought the plague. At its height, 7000 people were dying in
London every week, and thousands more fled to the countryside, hoping
to avoid the deadly disease. When it reached Cambridge the university
was closed down, and one of the students went home and stay with his
mum in Lincolnshire. His name was Isaac Newton, and that time he spent
at home, thinking, was the best of his life. He sorted out several
mathematical problems that had baffled other mathematicians. He
investigated the colours of the rainbow, invented a reflecting
telescope, and formed a new theory of light. Finally, he claimed he
saw an apple fall from a tree, had a deep insight into gravity, and
worked out the laws of motion. But as we discover in the programme,
history is rarely so simple. The apple story simply isn’t true; Newton
seems to have invented it 60 years later…
