Hooke's Micrographia (1665)
Robert Hooke. Micrographia: or Some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies Made by Magnifying Glasses. London, 1665.
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The curator of Great Britain's Royal Society from its founding until his death in 1702, Robert Hooke (1635-1702) was a man of enormous talent and energy. His watershed book on microscopy, Micrographia, has been compared with Galileo's Sidereus Nuncius of a half century earlier, for its impact on scientific thought. In it, his examination of the structure of cork led to his coining the modern biological usage of the word "cell." Described as "a banquet of observations with courses from the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms," the book contains some of the most famous microscopic images ever created.
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