Chroniclers of his time called him ‘despicable’, ‘mistrustful’ and ‘jealous’, and a rivalrous Isaac Newton might have had the only surviving portrait of him burnt, but, three centuries on, Robert ...

There’s no doubt that during his time the natural philosopher Robert Hooke was something of an outsider, depicted by his chroniclers as “jealous” and “mistrustful”. But over the past three centuries, ...