The Royal Society, the UK's autonomous scientific academy, has announced the launch of the notes and minutes written by the world's first professional scientist, Robert Hooke. The pages of the 17th century Hooke folio, which were lost for centuries, have been brought into the 21st century. These will now be available to everyone using the latest digital page turning technology.
The papers were saved from auction last year, following the payment of around £1 million, and returned to their original home. In its original form, the 17th century manuscripts are too delicate to touch but the turning-the-pages software makes it accessible to all. With the new techniques, such as infrared scanning, it is now possible to read comments and paragraphs written in the fragile pages, which at some point were erased.
A Wellcome Trust grant enabled the Society to return the manuscript to its home, completing the Society's records which date back to 1660, and to make it accessible to the public. Prof. Lisa Jardine, Director of the Centre for Editing Lives and Letters at Queen Mary, University of London and Advisor on the Royal Society's Collections, is a biographer of Hooke. She has been leading a team working to transcribe Hooke's work.
Readers will be able to leaf through selected pages of the manuscript to see first-hand notes and scribbles of the pioneering scientist. Text and diagrams in the document which detail the early minutes of the meetings held at the Royal Society can also be magnified.
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