Robert Hooke was born on July 16,1635 at Freshwater, which lies on the Isle of Wight. He was the son of a churchman, and apparently was highly educated by his parents. In his youth he studied several languages such as Latin and Chinese and had a fascination for secret codes. At the young age of 13, he was given the opportunity to enter Westminster School, and from there he attended Oxford. At Oxford, Hooke impressed some of the best scientists with his skills at designing controlled experiments, as well as building equipment. As a result, he became Robert Boyle's assistant, who specialized in chemistry. Hooke was elected "curator of experiments" and was responsible for demonstrating new experiment at the Royal Society of London's weekly meetings. Later, he was named Gresham Professor of Geometry at Grasham College in London. Robert spent the majority of his life in a group of rooms at the college. Over the last decade of his life, Hooke's health began to deteriorate, and he died, unmarried, on March 3, 1703 at the age of 68. To this day, there is not a single portrait of Robert Hooke. Some people believe that this is so because he was a dull, skinny, ugly man, who never felt he needed to sit down and have his portrait taken. Nevertheless, he made many technological and scientific contributions to the world throughout his life.
In 1665, Robert Hooke published Micrographia, which essentially was a diary of his biological experiments. He invented the compound microscope with an illumination system, and used it to conduct several experiments; his most important being the microscopic observation of thin slices of cork. The experiment was called "Observation XVII" and is famous because he had discovered plant cells. Hooke named them "cells" because the cell walls that he observed in the cork reminded him of the cells in a monastery. In 1678, the Royal Society of London asked Hooke to prove Anton van Leeuwenhoek's theory that he observed "small animals," or protozoa.
