Robert Hooke

Hello! My name is Robert Hooke. A long, long time ago, in the year 1635, I was born. When I was a little boy, I loved looking at everything around me. I especially loved the teeny-tiny things. I would watch busy ants marching in a line and look at the fuzzy wings of a bee. I always wondered, 'What do these things look like up close?' I loved to build things and figure out how they worked.

Because I was so curious, I built a special tool to help me see. It was called a microscope! It was like having super-powered eyes. I looked at a piece of cork from a plant. Wow! It was made of millions of tiny, empty boxes. They looked like little rooms, so I called them 'cells.' In the year 1665, I also drew a picture of a flea I saw through my microscope. It looked like a giant, hairy monster!

I put all my drawings in a book so everyone could see the secret, tiny world I had discovered. I lived to be 67 years old, and I never stopped being curious. Today, when you learn about the cells that make up all plants and animals, you can remember me, the person who named them!