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Robert Boyle

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Chemists

   Robert Boyle
   Robert Boyle

   Robert Boyle ( 25 January 1627 – 30 December 1691) was an Anglo-Irish
   natural philosopher, chemist, physicist, inventor, and early gentleman
   scientist, noted for his work in physics and chemistry. He is best
   known for the formulation of Boyle's law. Although his research and
   personal philosophy clearly has its roots in the alchemical tradition,
   he is largely regarded today as the first modern chemist. He is very
   famous in the science world for being the first scientist that kept
   accurate experiment logs. Among his works, The Sceptical Chymist is
   seen as a cornerstone book in the field of chemistry.

Early years

   Robert Boyle was born in Lismore Castle, in the province of Munster,
   Ireland, as the seventh son and fourteenth child of Richard Boyle, the
   "Great Earl of Cork". While still a child, he learned to speak Latin,
   Greek, and French. He was only eight and three quarters years old when
   he was sent to Eton College, of which his father's friend, Sir Henry
   Wotton, was then provost. After spending over three years at the
   college, he went to travel abroad with a French tutor. Nearly two years
   were passed in Geneva; visiting Italy in 1641, he remained during the
   winter of that year in Florence, studying the "paradoxes of the great
   star-gazer" Galileo Galilei, who died within a league (3 miles) of the
   city early in 1642.

Middle years

   Returning to England in 1645 he found that his father was hospitalized
   and had left him the manor of Stalbridge in Dorset, together with
   estates in Ireland. From that time, he devoted his life to scientific
   research, and soon took a prominent place in the band of inquirers,
   known as the " Invisible College", who devoted themselves to the
   cultivation of the "new philosophy". They met frequently in London,
   often at Gresham College; some of the members also had meetings at
   Oxford, and in that city Boyle went to reside in 1654. Reading in 1657
   of Otto von Guericke's air-pump, he set himself with the assistance of
   Robert Hooke to devise improvements in its construction, and with the
   result, the "machina Boyleana" or "Pneumatical Engine", finished in
   1659, he began a series of experiments on the properties of air. An
   inscription can be found on the wall of University College, Oxford in
   the High Street at Oxford (now the location of the Shelley Memorial),
   marking the spot where Cross Hall stood until the early 1800s. It was
   here Boyle rented rooms from the wealthy apothecary who owned the Hall:

   An account of the work he did with this instrument was published in
   1660 under the title New Experiments Physico-Mechanical. Among the
   critics of the views put forward in this book was a Jesuit, Franciscus
   Linus (1595–1675), and it was while answering his objections that Boyle
   enunciated the law that the volume of a gas varies inversely as the
   pressure, which among English-speaking peoples is usually called after
   his name, though on the continent of Europe it is attributed to Edme
   Mariotte, who did not publish it until 1676. In 1663 the Invisible
   College became the Royal Society of London for the Improvement of
   Natural Knowledge, and the charter of incorporation granted by Charles
   II of England, named Boyle a member of the council. In 1680 he was
   elected president of the society, but declined the honour from a
   scruple about oaths.

   It was during his time at Oxford that Boyle was a Chevalier. The
   Chevaliers are thought to have been established by royal order a few
   years before Boyle's time at Oxford. The period of Boyle's residence
   was marked by the reactionary actions of the victorious parliamentarian
   forces, consequently this period marked the most secretive period of
   Chevalier movements and thus little is known about Boyle's involvement
   beyond his membership.

   In 1668 he left Oxford for London where he resided at the house of his
   sister, Lady Ranelagh, in Pall Mall.

Later years

   In 1689 his health, never very strong, began to fail seriously and he
   gradually withdrew from his public engagements, ceasing his
   communications to the Royal Society, and advertising his desire to be
   excused from receiving guests, "unless upon occasions very
   extraordinary", on Tuesday and Friday forenoon, and Wednesday and
   Saturday afternoon. In the leisure thus gained he wished to "recruit
   his spirits, range his papers", and prepare some important chemical
   investigations which he proposed to leave "as a kind of Hermetic legacy
   to the studious disciples of that art", but of which he did not make
   known the nature. His health became still worse in 1691, and his death
   occurred on December 30 of that year, just a week after that of the
   sister with whom he had lived for more than twenty years. He was buried
   in the churchyard of St Martin's in the Fields, his funeral sermon
   being preached by his friend Bishop Burnet. In his will, Boyle endowed
   a series of Lectures which came to be known as the Boyle Lectures.

Scientific investigator

   Boyle's great merit as a scientific investigator is that he carried out
   the principles which Francis Bacon preached in the Novum Organum. Yet
   he would not avow himself a follower of Bacon, or indeed of any other
   teacher. On several occasions he mentions that in order to keep his
   judgment as unprepossessed as might be with any of the modern theories
   of philosophy, till he was "provided of experiments" to help him judge
   of them, he refrained from any study of the Atomical and the Cartesian
   systems, and even of the Novum Organum itself, though he admits to
   "transiently consulting" them about a few particulars. Nothing was more
   alien to his mental temperament than the spinning of hypotheses. He
   regarded the acquisition of knowledge as an end in itself, and in
   consequence he gained a wider outlook on the aims of scientific inquiry
   than had been enjoyed by his predecessors for many centuries. This,
   however, did not mean that he paid no attention to the practical
   application of science nor that he despised knowledge which tended to
   use.

   He himself was an alchemist; and believing the transmutation of metals
   to be a possibility, he carried out experiments in the hope of
   effecting it; and he was instrumental in obtaining the repeal, in 1689,
   of the statute of Henry IV against multiplying gold and silver. With
   all the important work he accomplished in physics - the enunciation of
   Boyle's law, the discovery of the part taken by air in the propagation
   of sound, and investigations on the expansive force of freezing water,
   on specific gravities and refractive powers, on crystals, on
   electricity, on colour, on hydrostatics, etc.- chemistry was his
   peculiar and favourite study. His first book on the subject was The
   Sceptical Chymist, published in 1661, in which he criticized the
   "experiments whereby vulgar Spagyrists are wont to endeavour to evince
   their Salt, Sulphur and Mercury to be the true Principles of Things.".
   For him chemistry was the science of the composition of substances, not
   merely an adjunct to the arts of the alchemist or the physician. He
   advanced towards the modern view of elements as the undecomposable
   constituents of material bodies; and understanding the distinction
   between mixtures and compounds, he made considerable progress in the
   technique of detecting their ingredients, a process which he designated
   by the term "analysis". He further supposed that the elements were
   ultimately composed of particles of various sorts and sizes, into
   which, however, they were not to be resolved in any known way. Applied
   chemistry had to thank him for improved methods and for an extended
   knowledge of individual substances. He also studied the chemistry of
   combustion and of respiration, and conducted experiments in physiology,
   where, however, he was hampered by the "tenderness of his nature" which
   kept him from anatomical dissections, especially of living animals,
   though he knew them to be "most instructing".

   Besides being a busy natural philosopher, Boyle devoted much time to
   theology, showing a very decided leaning to the practical side and an
   indifference to controversial polemics. At the Restoration he was
   favourably received at court, and in 1665 would have received the
   provostship of Eton, if he would have taken orders; but this he refused
   to do on the ground that his writings on religious subjects would have
   greater weight coming from a layman than a paid minister of the Church.
   As a director of the East India Company he spent large sums in
   promoting the spread of Christianity in the East, contributing
   liberally to missionary societies, and to the expenses of translating
   the Bible or portions of it into various languages. He founded the
   Boyle lectures, intended to defend the Christian religion against those
   he considered "notorious infidels, namely atheists, deists, pagans,
   Jews and Muslims", with the provison that controversies between
   Christians were not to be mentioned. In 2004, the Boyle Lectures were
   resurrected in London, although there is no longer any attempt to
   defend Christian theology from scientific findings.

   In person Boyle was tall, slender and of a pale countenance. His
   constitution was far from robust, and throughout his life he suffered
   from feeble health and low spirits. While his scientific work procured
   him an extraordinary reputation among his contemporaries, his private
   character and virtues, the charm of his social manners, his wit and
   powers of conversation, endeared him to a large circle of personal
   friends. He was never married. His writings are exceedingly voluminous,
   and his style is clear and straightforward, though undeniably prolix.

   In 2004 The Robert Boyle Science Room was opened in the Lismore
   Heritage Centre, near his birthplace, dedicated to his life and works
   where students have the opportunity of studying science and
   participating in scientific experiments.

Important works

   The following are the more important of his works:
     * 1660 - New Experiments Physico-Mechanical: Touching the Spring of
       the Air and their Effects
     * 1661 - The Sceptical Chymist
     * 1663 - Considerations touching the Usefulness of Experimental
       Natural Philosophy (followed by a second part in 1671)
     * 1663 - Experiments and Considerations upon Colours, with
       Observations on a Diamond that Shines in the Dark
     * 1665 - New Experiments and Observations upon Cold
     * 1666 - Hydrostatical Paradoxes
     * 1666 - Origin of Forms and Qualities according to the Corpuscular
       Philosophy
     * 1669 - a continuation of his work on the spring of air
     * 1670 - tracts about the Cosmical Qualities of Things, the
       Temperature of the Subterraneal and Submarine Regions, the Bottom
       of the Sea, &c. with an Introduction to the History of Particular
       Qualities
     * 1672 - Origin and Virtues of Gems
     * 1673 - Essays of the Strange Subtilty, Great Efficacy, Determinate
       Nature of Effluviums
     * 1674 - two volumes of tracts on the Saltiness of the Sea, the
       Hidden Qualities of the Air, Cold, Celestial Magnets,
       Animadversions on Ijobbes's Problemata de Vacuo
     * 1676 - Experiments and Notes about the Mechanical Origin or
       Production of Particular Qualities, including some notes on
       electricity and magnetism
     * 1678 - Observations upon an artificial Substance that Shines
       without any Preceding Illustration
     * 1680 - the Aerial Noctiluca
     * 1682 - New Experiments and Observations upon the Icy Noctiluca
     * 1682 - a further continuation of his work on the air
     * 1684 - Memoirs for the Natural History of the Human Blood
     * 1685 - Short Memoirs for the Natural Experimental History of
       Mineral Waters
     * 1690 - Medic-ma Hydrostatica
     * 1691 - Experimentae et Observationes Physicae

   Among his religious and philosophical writings were:
     * 1648/ 1660 - Seraphic Love, written in 1648, but not published till
       1660
     * 1663 - an Essay upon the Style of the Holy Scriptures
     * 1664 - Excellence of Theology compared with Natural Philosophy
     * 1665 - Occasional Reflections upon Several Subjects, which was
       ridiculed by Swift in A Meditation Upon a Broom-Stick, and by
       Butler in An Occasional Reflection on Dr Charlton's Feeling a Dog's
       Pulse at Gresham College
     * 1675 - Some Considerations about the Reconcileableness of Reason
       and Religion, with a Discourse about the Possibility of the
       Resurrection

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