hoof-and-mouth disease See foot-and-mouth disease Hooghly River See Hugli River
Hooke, Robert (b. July 18, 1635, Freshwater, Isle of Wight, Eng.—d. March 3, 1703, London) English physicist. From 1665 he taught at Oxford University. His achievements and theories were bewilderingly diverse. His important law of elasticity, known as Hooke’s law (1660), states that the stretching of a solid is proportional to the force applied to it. He was one of the first to build and use a reflecting telescope. He suggested that Jupiter rotates on its axis, and his detailed sketches of Mars were later used to determine its rate of rotation. He suggested that a pendulum could be used to measure gravitation, and he attempted to show that the Earth and Moon follow an elliptical orbit around the Sun. He discovered dif¬ fraction and proposed the wave theory of light to explain it. He was one of the first proponents of the theory of evolution. He was the first to state in general that all matter expands when heated and that air is made up of particles separated from each other by relatively large distances. He invented a marine barometer, contributed improvements to clocks, the quadrant, and the universal joint, and anticipated the steam engine.
Hooker, Joseph (b. Nov. 13, 1814, Hadley, Mass., U.S.—d. Oct. 31, 1879, Garden City, N.Y.) U.S. Army officer. He attended West Point and served in the Mexican War.
Appointed brigadier general of vol¬ unteers at the outbreak of the Ameri¬ can Civil War, he participated in major campaigns and became known as “Fighting Joe.” He succeeded Ambrose E. Burnside as commander of the Army of the Potomac after the disastrous Battle of Fredericksburg.
He reorganized the army but failed to defeat Robert E. Lee at the Battle of Chancellorsville, incurring heavy Union casualties. He resigned just before the Battle of Gettysburg but later helped secure the Union victory at the Battle of Chattanooga.
Hooker, Richard (b. March 1554?, Heavitree, Exeter, Devon,
Eng.—d. Nov. 2, 1600, Bishops- bourne, near Canterbury, Kent)
English clergyman and theologian. He attended the University of Oxford, became a fellow of Corpus Christi College in 1577, and was ordained in 1581. He served as master of the Temple Church (1585-91) and later was vicar of churches at Drayton Beauchamp, Boscombe, and Bishopsboume.
Joseph Hooker
COURTESY OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, WASHINGTON, D.C.
© 2006 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
Hooker ► Hope diamond I 893
He created a distinctive Anglican theology during a time when the Church of England was threatened by both Roman Catholicism and Puritanism. His great work was Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (1594-97), in which he defended the threefold authority of the Bible, church tradition, and human reason.
Hooker, Thomas (b. probably July 7, 1586, Markfield, Leicestershire, Eng.—d. July 7, 1647, Hartford, Conn.) Anglo-American colonial cler¬ gyman. He held pastorates in England (1620-30), where he was attacked for Puritan leanings. He fled to Holland before emigrating to the Massa¬ chusetts Bay Colony in 1633. As pastor of a company of Puritans, he moved them to Connecticut to settle Hartford in 1636. He helped frame the Fundamental Orders (1639), which later formed the basis of the Con¬ necticut constitution.
Hooper, Franklin Henry (b. Jan. 28, 1862, Worcester, Mass., U.S.—-d. Aug. 14, 1940, near Saranac Lake, N.Y.) U.S. editor. He was the brother of Horace Everett Hooper, publisher of Encyclopaedia Britannica. He joined the Britannica staff in 1899, and over the next 39 years he was connected with five editions of the Britannica, serving as editor in chief
1932-38.
Hooper, Horace Everett (b. Dec. 8, 1859, Worcester, Mass., U.S.—d. June 13, 1922, Bedford Hills, N.Y.) U.S. publisher. Hooper left school at age 16 and became involved in bookselling. With the collabo¬ ration of The Times of London, he produced a highly successful reprint of the Encyclopaedia Britannica' s ninth edition (1875-89). In 1901 he and Walter Jackson purchased Britannica outright; it was sold in 1920. He planned and published the 10th edition (1902-03), of which his brother Franklin Henry Hooper was an editor; the 11th edition (1910-11), famed for its rich, leisurely prose and for being wholly new in concept; and the 12th edition (1922).
Hoorn Islands See Futuna Islands
Hoover, Herbert (Clark) (b. Aug. 10, 1874, West Branch, Iowa, U.S.—d. Oct. 20, 1964, New York, N.Y.) 31st president of the U.S. (1929- 33). After graduating from Stanford University (1895), he became a min¬ ing engineer, administering engineering projects on four continents (1895-1913). He then headed Allied relief operations in England and Belgium. As U.S. national food administrator during World War I, he instituted programs that furnished food to the Allies and to famine- stricken areas of Europe. Appointed U.S. secretary of commerce (1921— 27), he reorganized the department, creating divisions to regulate broadcasting and aviation. He oversaw commissions to build Boulder (later Hoover) Dam and the St. Lawrence Seaway. In 1928, as the Repub¬ lican presidential candidate, he soundly defeated Alfred E. Smith. His hopes for a “New Day” program were quickly overwhelmed by the Great Depres¬ sion. In response, he called business leaders to the White House to urge them not to lay off workers or cut wages, and he urged state and local governments to join private charities in caring for destitute Americans. Believing that a dole would sap the will of Americans to provide for themselves, he adamantly opposed direct federal relief payments to indi¬ viduals, though in 1932 he finally allowed relief to farmers through the Reconstruction Finance Corp. After his electoral defeat in 1932 by Fran¬ klin D. Roosevelt, he regularly spoke out against what he considered the radicalism of the New Deal and Roosevelt’s attempts to involve the U.S. in countering German and Japa¬ nese aggression. After World War II he participated in famine-relief work in Europe and was appointed head of the Hoover Commission.
Hoover, J(ohn) Edgar (b. Jan. 1,
1895, Washington, D.C., U.S.—d.
May 2, 1972, Washington, D.C.)
U.S. director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). He entered the Department of Justice as a file reviewer in 1917; two years later, as special assistant to Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, he helped in the roundup and deportation of sus¬ pected Bolsheviks. In 1924 he was named director of the Bureau of Investigation, which he remade into
a professional, merit-based organization. In the 1930s he successfully publicized the FBI’s success in tracking down and capturing well-known criminals. During this time, both the FBI’s size and its responsibilities grew steadily. In the late 1930s Hoover received authorization to inves¬ tigate foreign espionage in the U.S. and the activities of communists and fascists alike. When the Cold War began in the late 1940s, the FBI under¬ took intensive surveillance of communists and other left-wing activists in the U.S. Hoover’s animus toward radicals of every kind led him to inves¬ tigate both the Ku Klux Klan and Martin Luther King, Jr., as well as other African American activists in the 1960s. At the same time, he maintained a hands-off policy toward the Mafia, which was allowed to conduct its operations nationwide practically free of FBI scrutiny or interference. Hoover habitually used the FBI’s enormous surveillance and information¬ gathering powers to collect damaging information on politicians through¬ out the country, and apparently he was able to intimidate even sitting presidents by threatening to leak damaging disclosures about them. He retained his post for 48 years, until his death.