Robert Hooke was the first professional scientist in England and a pioneer in the field of scientific communication. He was also one of the few early scientists who left behind a detailed manual describing how others could follow his example and become 'experimental philosophers'. This new biography takes Hooke's methodology as a starting point, exploring what he himself considered to be the main characteristics of a scientific life. It follows Hooke through the shops of instrument makers and craftsmen, to cafés and bookshops, to construction sites and the king's audience chamber at Whitehall Palace. It uses new evidence to explain how Hooke's observations and conversations with workers, philosophical colleagues, craftsmen, and London’s wealthy elite supported his scientific research in unexpected but significant ways. Hooke emerges as a proponent of the everyday, whose greatest gift was the ability to see the prospect of new knowledge in the least promising aspects of daily life.