ROBERT BOYLE

 Robert Boyle

He was born on 25 January 1627 in Lismore Castle, Lismore, County Waterford, Ireland

 Boyle was an Anglo-Irish natural philosopher, chemist, physicist, inventor and therefore one of the founders of modern chemistry, and one of the pioneers of modern experimental scientific method. 

He is best known for Boyle's law,which describes the inversely  proportional relationship between the absolute pressure and volume of a gas, if the temperature is kept constant within a closed system. Among his works

Robert Boyle's image.

The Sceptical Chymist is seen as a  cornerstone book in the field of chemistry. He was a devout and pious Anglican and is noted for his writing in Theology.

Boyles influences

1. Chemistry

2. Physics

3. Galileo Galilei

4. Otto von Guericke

5. Francis Bacon

6. Evangelista Torricelli

7. Samuel Hartlib

8. Katherine Boyle Jones

People who Boyle influenced

1. Isaac Newton

Early life and education.

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

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.”

Theological activities

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 particularly on the relationship between the emergent new science and religion.

 Boyle was deeply concerned about the widespread perception that irreligion and atheism were on the rise, and he strove to demonstrate ways in which science and religion were mutually supportive. For Boyle, studying nature as a product of God’s handiwork was an inherently religious duty. 

He argued that this method of study would, in return, illuminate God’s omnipresence and goodness, thereby enhancing a scientist’s understanding of the divine. The Christian Virtuoso (1690) summarized these views and may be seen as a manifesto of Boyle’s own life as the model of a Christian scientist.

Robert life  in London

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.

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. 

 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.

What caused Boyle's death?

Throughout his adult life, Boyle was suffering from weak eyes and hands.recurring illnesses and one to more strokes.

Robert died at the age of 64 December 31 1691 in London (England) after short illness exacerbated by his grief over his sister Katherine's death