Timeline

1635 18 July Born Freshwater, Isle of Wight, son of The Rev John Hooke, curate to the parish. Hooke is intended for the Church, but headaches and a sickly constitution decree otherwise.
1648 Death of father; Hooke goes to London. Enters Westminster School
1653 Enters Christ Church College, Oxford. Close friend of Wren also an Old Westminster, who came up to Wadham in 1650.
1655 Communicates ‘artifices for flying’ to John Wilkins (Wadham College), studies astronomy with Seth Ward, assists Thomas Willis in Chemistry and is recommended by him to Robert Boyle. Assists Boyle in construction of the air pump.
1658 Applied the circular pendulum to watches; refuses terms of a patent negotiated by Boyle. Discovery remains unknown until 1675.
1661 Publishes article on capillary attraction, later included in Micrographia.
1662 12 November Appointed Curator of Experiments at the Royal Society.
1663 3 June Elected Fellow of the Royal Society
19 Oct Royal Society’s Repository committed to Hooke’s care.
1664 9 May First to infer the rotation of Jupiter
June Sir John Cutler founds a lecture for Hooke at a yearly salary of £50. Reads astronomical lectures at Gresham College as locum for Dr Pope 1664-65
July Found the number of vibrations corresponding to musical notes.
17 September Discovers fifth star in the Orion trapezium
1665  January Publication of Micrographia
11 January Hooke’s post of Curator at the Royal Society is made permanent at a salary of £30 p.a. with apartments in Gresham College. Hooke lives there for the remainder of his life.
20 March Nominated Professor of Geometry, Gresham College.
While plague is in London, Hooke is at Epsom, employed as Philosophical Assistant to Dr Wilkins and Sir William Petty at Durdans, the seat of the Earl of Berkeley.
1666 12 March Drawings of Mars enable its period of rotation to be found more than 200 years later.
21 March Meetings of Royal Society are resumed, Hooke reads a discourse on gravity and suggests measuring its force by means of a pendulum.
May Reads paper on curvilinear motion and shows that the centre of gravity of the earth and the moon. Also describes an ellipse around the sun. Presents to the Royal Society the first screw-divided quadrant, an anemometer, and a ‘weather-clock’.
Sat under a bell-jar while the air was pumped from it
1 August Presents observations of the comet of 1664 to the Royal Society.
1667 12 June Discourse on the effect of earthquakes.
19 September Exhibited an unsuccessful model for the rebuilding of the City of London after the Great Fire. Appointed as a City Surveyor and designs numerous buildings.

Explains the scintillation of stars.
1669 July – October Earliest attempt at measuring the parallax of a fixed star – his results lead to Bradley’s discovery of stellar aberration.
1670 Delivers Cutlerian Lectures dealing with the above experiments.
1672 15 Feb Publishes paper on diffraction of light, objecting to Newton’s communication on this subject to the Royal Society in January.
1674 Publishes ‘An Attempt to Prove the Motion of the Earth by Observations’; this records the first observation of a star in daylight. Controversy with Hevelius, author of ‘Machina Celestis’; a series of Cutlerian Lectures finds Hooke making acrid remarks on “that curoius and pompous book”.

Constructs the first Gregorian telescope.
1675 9 & 16 Dec Newton’s ‘Discourse on Colour’ evokes objections from Hooke on the grounds that the main of it was contained in Micrographia. The argument is resolved with Newton claiming originality but acknowledging important obligations to Hooke’s work.
Huyghens re-discovers the spiral spring applied to watches; Hooke then has Thomas Tompion make some of his ‘new watches’.
1676 Publishes the principles of the spiral springs in ‘A Description of Helioscopes’. This starts a quarrel with Oldenburg (Secretary of the Royal Society) who Hooke accuses of being “a trafficker in intelligence”.
1677 Hooke obliged by the Royal Society to withdraw his comment on Oldenburg; this was contained in ‘Lampas, or a Description of some Mechanical Improvements of Lamps and Water-poises’.
25 Oct Hooke becomes Secretary to the Royal Society on Oldenburg’s death.
1678 ‘Cometa’, dealing with the great comet of 1677 and including a statement of the Law of Inverse Squares and the effect of the Sun on comet tails; ‘Lectures de Potentia Restitutiva’ give virtually the present notions of elasticity and the kinetic theory of gases
1679 Letter from Hooke to Newton induces the latter to ‘resume his former thoughts concerning the Moon’. The publication of this work in ‘Principia’ led to protest from Hooke that he ‘gave Newton the first hint of this invention’. Newton’s irritation leads to his suppressing ‘Opticks’ until after Hooke’s death.
1682 Hooke begins to adopt a policy of secrecy to guard against supposed infringements of his rights.
30 Nov Hooke ceases to be Secretary to the Royal Society.
1684 Describes a practical system of telegraphy.
1687 Grace Hooke, Hooke’s niece dies, which affects Hooke’s spirits profoundly.
1691 Dec Created Doctor of Physic at Doctors’ Commons
1692 Reads a ‘curious discourse’ on the Tower of Babel to the Royal Society.
1693 Expounds on Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses’.
1696 June Royal Society offers to pay for experiments – but Hooke’s health is failing. Chancery suit over his salary settled in his favour.
1700 Halley describes Hooke’s last invention, a marine telescope, to the Royal Society.
1702-3 Hooke becomes blind and legs swell – possibly a consequence of diabetes.
1703 3 March Hooke dies at Gresham College; is buried at St Helen’s Bishopsgate.