Robert Hooke (/hʊk/; 18 July 1635 – 3 March 1703)^[4][a] was an English polymath who was active as a physicist ('natural philosopher'), astronomer, geologist, meteorologist, and architect.^[5] He is credited as one of the first scientists to investigate living things at microscopic scale in 1665,^[6] using a compound microscope that he designed.^[7] Hooke was an impoverished scientific inquirer in young adulthood who went on to become one of the most important scientists of his time.^[8] After the Great Fire of London in 1666, Hooke (as a surveyor and architect) attained wealth and esteem by performing more than half of the property line surveys and assisting with the city's rapid reconstruction.^[9][8] Often vilified by writers in the centuries after his death, his reputation was restored at the end of the twentieth century and he has been called "England's Leonardo [da Vinci]".^[10]

In 1660, Hooke discovered the law of elasticitythat bears his name and describes the linear variation of tension with extension in an elasticspring. Hooke first described this discovery in an anagram "ceiiinosssttuv", whose solution he published in 1678 as Ut tensio, sic vis ("As the extension, so the force").^[103] His work on elasticity culminated in his development of the balance spring or hairspring, which for the first time enabled a portable timepiece – a watch – to keep time with reasonable accuracy

From my physics days I remember learning about Hooke’s law thus seeing his name I had to make sure this was indeed the same guy and it is!