Robert Hooke stood out as an inventive, versatile, and prolific scientist and architect in an age of brilliant minds. But for three hundred years his reputation has been overshadowed by those of his two great contemporaries, his friend Sir Christopher Wren and his rival Sir Isaac Newton. He was an inventor, astronomer, and anatomist, as well as a candid diarist, braggart, hoarder of money and secrets, and an implacable rival.

In Stephen Inwood's biography of this forgotten genius, Hooke and his world are vividly recreated with all their contradictions, successes, and failures. The Forgotten Genius is an absorbing and compelling study of this unduly overlooked man.