Science Moguls To Bid on Rare Hooke Journal

One of the most important science manuscripts to be put up for sale is expected to be bought by one of the new generation of science-literate American billionaires who have made their fortunes in new technology and medical advances.

The 600-page journal of 17th-century British scientist Richard Hooke, which goes under the hammer at Bonham's auction house in London today, has been dubbed "science's missing link."

The hand written diary is brimming with ascerbic comments about his colleague Isaac Newton and others. Bonham's, which found the book at the bottom of a cupboard in a house in Hampshire, England, estimates it will fetch $1.75 million.

"The strongest potential buyers are in the American marketplace," a San Francisco-based specialist in books and manuscripts at Bonham's, Martin Gammon, said. He added that he had discussed the work with several of his clients. "You never know," he said.

Probably the most famous technology billionaire with an eye for rare manuscripts is Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who bought a da Vinci codex for $35 million. An anonymous American collector spent $2 million for an Archimedes palimpsest.

Sometimes these rare works make it to public institutions. Science libraries at MIT and the Smithsonian bear the name of a Connecticut electrical engineer, Bern Dibner, who died in 1988.

Some scholars in the history of science said they hoped that Americans would let the journal go to what they consider its natural home: the Royal Society in London, one of the world's oldest academies of science, of which in 1663 Hooke was a founding fellow. The society's library holds most of Hooke's papers, and the journal records meetings and experiments there.

The Royal Society has been scrambling to raise money to buy the journal. Should it be sold to a foreign buyer, the society has said it will petition the British government to deny an export license, which would delay but not prevent the journal from leaving Britain.

Librarians at the Smithsonian, Harvard, and the New York Academy of Medicine said they did not have enough to make a bid on the journal.

Whoever buys it will have more than 500 pages of copious notes by a man who debated gravity, molecules, and longitude with Isaac Newton, Sir Christopher Wren, and Robert Boyle. The journal offers much evidence of Hooke's competitive nature. He copiously noted when colleagues slighted him or stole credit from him.