[Scans of Robert Hooke’s notebooks now available online](http://darwin.gruts.com/weblog/archive/2007/10/19a/).
I think [Robert Hooke](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hooke) is fascinating. A brilliant mind who would be one of the most revered scientists ever if he hadn’t had the misfortune to live in the same time and place as a more brilliant scientist in Isaac Newton.
(And then compounded that misfortune by annoyng Newton, who was also a world record holder at grudge holding).
The notebooks are also fascinating, dealing mainly with the work of the early Royal Society. This period of time is when science as we know it is coming into being. Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle deals with this period with only a little exaggeration of some of the things that early scientists would do.