The Wellcome Trust has helped ensure that the Royal Society minutes written by Robert Hooke will return to their original home.

After lying in a dusty Hampshire attic for half a century, Robert Hooke's 17th-century minutes of the Royal Society were just about to go under the hammer with a guide price of £1–1.5 million when the Royal Society announced that donors had come forward with enough money for it to be able to buy the manuscript. The 146 donations to save the Hooke papers ranged from £5 to £500 000 – and the Wellcome Trust was the largest donor.

The 520-page folio dating from 1661 to 1682 charts the revolution in scientific understanding that marks the beginning of modern science. Hooke, Surveyor of the City of London after the Great Fire of 1666, is best known for Hooke's law, but he also devised the universal joint and the balance wheel for watches, as well as coining the word 'cell' in relation to biology.

Hooke also fell out badly with Sir Isaac Newton, who did much to belittle Hooke's achievements. In part, this is why Hooke's name is nowhere near as famous as Newton's.