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Robert Boyle FRS [2] (/ b ɔɪ l /; 25 January 1627 – 31 December 1691) was an Anglo-Irish [3] natural philosopher, chemist, physicist, alchemist and inventor. Boyle is largely regarded today as the first modern chemist, and therefore one of the founders of modern chemistry , and one of the pioneers of modern experimental scientific method .
- Overview
- Early life and education
- Scientific career
- Theological activities
- Mature years in London
Robert Boyle (born January 25, 1627, Lismore Castle, County Waterford, Ireland—died December 31, 1691, London, England) was an Anglo-Irish natural philosopher and theological writer, a preeminent figure of 17th-century intellectual culture. He was best known as a natural philosopher, particularly in the field of chemistry, but his scientific work c...
Boyle was born into one of the wealthiest families in Britain. He was the 14th child and 7th son of Richard Boyle, the 1st earl of Cork, by his second wife, Catherine, daughter of Sir Geoffrey Fenton, secretary of state for Ireland. At age eight, Boyle began his formal education at Eton College, where his studious nature quickly became apparent. In 1639 he and his brother Francis embarked on a grand tour of the continent together with their tutor Isaac Marcombes. In 1642, owing to the Irish rebellion, Francis returned home while Robert remained with his tutor in Geneva and pursued further studies. Boyle returned to England in 1644, where he took up residence at his hereditary estate of Stalbridge in Dorset. There he began a literary career writing ethical and devotional tracts, some of which employed stylistic and rhetorical models drawn from French popular literature, especially romance writings. In 1649 he began investigating nature via scientific experimentation, a process that enthralled him. From 1647 until the mid-1650s, Boyle remained in close contact with a group of natural philosophers and social reformers gathered around the intelligencer Samuel Hartlib. This group, the Hartlib Circle, included several chemists—most notably George Starkey, a young immigrant from America—who heightened Boyle’s interest in experimental chemistry.
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Boyle spent much of 1652–54 in Ireland overseeing his hereditary lands, and he also performed some anatomic dissections. In 1654 he was invited to Oxford, and he took up residence at the university from c. 1656 until 1668. In Oxford he was exposed to the latest developments in natural philosophy and became associated with a group of notable natural philosophers and physicians, including John Wilkins, Christopher Wren, and John Locke. These individuals, together with a few others, formed the “Experimental Philosophy Club,” which at times convened in Boyle’s lodgings. Much of Boyle’s best-known work dates from this period. In 1659 he and Robert Hooke, the clever inventor and subsequent curator of experiments for the Royal Society, completed the construction of their famous air pump and used it to study pneumatics. Their resultant discoveries regarding air pressure and the vacuum appeared in Boyle’s first scientific publication, New Experiments Physico-Mechanicall, Touching the Spring of the Air and Its Effects (1660). Boyle and Hooke discovered several physical characteristics of air, including its role in combustion, respiration, and the transmission of sound. One of their findings, published in 1662, later became known as “Boyle’s law.” This law expresses the inverse relationship that exists between the pressure and volume of a gas, and it was determined by measuring the volume occupied by a constant quantity of air when compressed by differing weights of mercury. Other natural philosophers, including Henry Power and Richard Towneley, concurrently reported similar findings about air.
Boyle’s scientific work is characterized by its reliance on experiment and observation and its reluctance to formulate generalized theories. He advocated a “mechanical philosophy” that saw the universe as a huge machine or clock in which all natural phenomena were accountable purely by mechanical, clockwork motion. His contributions to chemistry were based on a mechanical “corpuscularian hypothesis”—a brand of atomism which claimed that everything was composed of minute (but not indivisible) particles of a single universal matter and that these particles were only differentiable by their shape and motion. Among his most influential writings were The Sceptical Chymist (1661), which assailed the then-current Aristotelian and especially Paracelsian notions about the composition of matter and methods of chemical analysis, and the Origine of Formes and Qualities (1666), which used chemical phenomena to support the corpuscularian hypothesis. Boyle also maintained a lifelong pursuit of transmutational alchemy, endeavouring to discover the secret of transmuting base metals into gold and to contact individuals believed to possess alchemical secrets. Overall, Boyle argued so strongly for the need of applying the principles and methods of chemistry to the study of the natural world and to medicine that he later gained the appellation of the “father of chemistry.”
Boyle was a devout and pious Anglican who keenly championed his faith. He sponsored educational and missionary activities and wrote a number of theological treatises. Whereas the religious writings of Boyle’s youth were primarily devotional, his mature works focused on the more complex philosophical issues of reason, nature, and revelation and part...
In 1668 Boyle left Oxford and took up residence with his sister Katherine Jones, Vicountess Ranelagh, in her house on Pall Mall in London. There he set up an active laboratory, employed assistants, received visitors, and published at least one book nearly every year. Living in London also provided him the opportunity to participate actively in the Royal Society.
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Boyle was a genial man who achieved both national and international renown during his lifetime. He was offered the presidency of the Royal Society (in 1680) and the episcopacy but declined both. Throughout his adult life, Boyle was sickly, suffering from weak eyes and hands, recurring illnesses, and one or more strokes. He died at age 64 after a short illness exacerbated by his grief over Katherine’s death a week earlier. He left his papers to the Royal Society and a bequest for establishing a series of lectures in defense of Christianity. These lectures, now known as the Boyle Lectures, continue to this day.
Oct 4, 2023 · Robert Boyle (1627-1691) was an Anglo-Irish chemist, physicist, and experimental philosopher. Boyle was a prolific author, made significant experiments with air pumps, and presented the first litmus test. A founding member of the Royal Society, Boyle bequeathed funding for a long-lasting series of lectures, the Boyle Lectures, which aimed to ...
- Mark Cartwright
- Robert Boyle is famous as a key figure of the Scientific Revolution, who pioneered a law of air pressure, the litmus test, and the Royal Society.
- Robert Boyle discovered that the pressure exerted by a certain quantity of air varies inversely in proportion to its volume. This is now known as B...
- Robert Boyle was both an alchemist and a chemist. He believed in using any experimental method to achieve new knowledge. Boyle kept his science and...
Robert Boyle was an Irish aristocrat and a pioneer of modern chemistry. He discovered Boyle's Law, studied the nature of heat and light, and promoted experimental science and religious tolerance.
Jan 15, 2002 · Robert Boyle. First published Tue Jan 15, 2002; substantive revision Wed Dec 14, 2022. Boyle was one of the leading intellectual figures of the seventeenth century and an important influence on Locke and Newton (Anstey 2018). He was an experimental philosopher, unwilling to construct abstract theories to which his experimental results had to ...
Robert Boyle. Known for his law of gases, Boyle was a 17th-century pioneer of modern chemistry. Every general-chemistry student learns of Robert Boyle (1627–1691) as the person who discovered that the volume of a gas decreases with increasing pressure and vice versa—the famous Boyle’s law. A leading scientist and intellectual of his day ...
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Robert Boyle (1627—1691) Robert Boyle was one of the most prolific figures in the scientific revolution and the leading scientist of his day. He was a proponent of the mechanical philosophy which sought to explain natural phenomena in terms of matter and motion, rather than appealing to Aristotelian substantial forms and qualities.
