CALLING Robert Hooke an unsung hero of science would probably be inaccurate these days, as well as a clich.

The contemporary of Wren and Newton - the former a friend, the latter a bitter foe - is being rediscovered with a vengeance, not only through new books, but also through an old portrait which some experts believe is of him, which merited an item on a recent Radio 4 Today programme.

Hooke's greatness as a scientist lay in practical experimentation. But this biography by Michael Cooper is only partly concerned with his scientific status.

One of the venues he used for both gravitational and atmospheric experiments was London's old St Paul's Cathedral.

That was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666. And the aftermath of that conflagration primarily concerns Cooper, for it was Hooke who became London's City Surveyor, given the task of overseeing the recreation of the capital - a role which Cooper says made him "the first professional surveyor in the modern sense".

Sadly, as Cooper relates, most of his achievements, in this field as in the scientific, were obscured by the passing years. Cooper sets out to put that right, explaining how Hooke helped to create a city which was "more orderly, healthier and much more beautiful than what had gone before" - which isn't a bad epitaph.

Updated: 08:46 Wednesday, October 08, 2003