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"Missing link" science manuscript up for sale

A manuscript charting the birth of modern science, lost for more than 200 years, goes on sale on Tuesday with a price tag in excess of one million pounds.

Hailed as "science's missing link," the journal of Robert Hooke contains details of experiments he conducted as curator at the Royal Society from 1662 and his correspondence as its secretary from 1677.

It was found by chance in a cupboard at a private house in Hampshire by experts from auctioneer Bonhams conducting a routine valuation.

The notes include a celebrated row between Hooke and Isaac Newton over planetary motion and gravity, and the lost record confirming the first observation of microbes by Antoni van Leeuwenhoek.

Read entire article at Reuters