‘Science’s Missing Link’ Will Have Good Home
From Times Wire Reports
A last-minute deal reached Tuesday ensures that a manuscript charting the birth of modern science, lost for more than 200 years, will be housed at Britain’s Royal Society rather than with a private collector.
Hailed as “science’s missing link,” the journal of Robert Hooke had been due to go on sale at auction with a price tag in excess of $1.75 million. Just before the auction, an anonymous bidder agreed to buy it and give it to the Royal Society, Britain’s academy of leading scientists. The journal contains details of experiments Hooke conducted as curator at the Royal Society from 1662 and his correspondence as secretary from 1677. It was found by chance in a cupboard at a private house.