Robert Boyle

Robert Boyle put chemistry on a firm scientific footing, transforming it from a field bogged down in alchemy
and mysticism into one based on measurement. He defined elements, compounds, and mixtures, and he
coined the new term ‘chemical analysis,’ a field in which he made several powerful contributions.

He discovered Boyle’s Law – the first of the gas laws – relating the pressure of a gas to its volume; he
5 established that electrical forces are transmitted through a vacuum, but sound is not; and he also stated that
the movement of particles is responsible for heat. He was the first person to write specific experimental
guidance for other scientists, telling them the importance of achieving reliable, repeatable results.

Robert Boyle was born into an aristocratic family on January 25, 1627 in Lismore Castle, in the small town of
Lismore, Ireland.

10 His father was Richard Boyle, who had arrived from England in 1588 with a modest sum of money. Through
a good marriage and a high level of business acumen, he had grown immensely wealthy and become a
large-scale landowner. With land, ownership came the aristocratic title Earl of Cork. The land he bought had
been confiscated from rebellious Irish noblemen and commoners by the army of Queen Elizabeth I of
England, who was also Queen of Ireland.

15 Robert’s mother was Catherine Fenton, born in Ireland to a wealthy English family. Her father became
Secretary of State in Ireland.

Robert was his parents’ fourteenth child. In his infancy, he was sent to live with a poor Irish family. His father
preferred his children to spend their early years this way, believing it toughened them up. Robert developed
a stutter in this time.

20 Robert’s mother died when he was just two years old, and he never knew her. Sometime after his mother’s
death, he returned to the family home, where he was tutored in French and Latin. He particularly enjoyed
learning French.

At the age of eight, Robert was sent to England’s most prestigious private school, Eton College; he spent
three years there.

25 At the age of 12, he embarked on a lengthy tour of Europe with his older brother, Francis, and a tutor. This
‘Grand Tour’ was a traditional part of many wealthy people’s education, often including visits to the great
classical sites of Italy and Greece. In fact, Robert spent much of his time in the Swiss city of Geneva.

He traveled to Italy at the age of 14, learning there how Galileo Galilei had used mathematics to explain
motion. Robert was thrilled by this and began studying Galileo’s work, presumably smuggled in from
30 Switzerland, because it had been banned in Italy.

Galileo was in the final year of his life when Robert arrived in the great Italian city of Florence. Galileo lived
close to Florence under house arrest; he died while Robert was in Florence. Robert approved of the idea
promoted by Galileo and Nicolaus Copernicus that the earth and other planets orbit the sun.

While Robert was on his Grand Tour, his father died, leaving him a large country house near the English
35 town of Stalbridge, plus large estates in Ireland.

In 1644, aged 17, Robert returned to England, staying for some months with his older sister Katherine in
London. He then moved to his Stalbridge country house. All was not plain sailing, however, because in 1644
England was in the middle of a civil war caused by a power struggle between Parliament and the King.
40 Robert Boyle had no intention of getting involved in the war. He took a cautious approach, so that neither of
the warring sides could see him as an enemy. He did not approve of the behavior of soldiers. A deeply
religious young man, he was worried that involvement in military activities would corrupt him.

In fact, while war raged in England, Boyle spent time writing his first book. It concerned morality and was
45 entitled Aretology.

He became increasingly interested in carrying out scientific experiments and studying scientific literature. He
equipped a laboratory in 1646 and began traveling to London for meetings with the ‘Philosophical College,’ a
group dedicated to experimental science and the exchange of scientific ideas.

Like many budding scientists of his time, Robert Boyle tried his hand at alchemy. Not surprisingly, he was
50 unsuccessful in his attempts to discover the Philosophers’ Stone: he described these as ‘chemistry.’

Boyle lived in an extraordinarily superstitious age. The Enlightenment – the triumph of reason over
superstition – that transformed much of Europe in the 1700s was still a long way off.

In Boyle’s time, people lived in terror of (non-existent) witches and (all too real) witch finders. Between 1644
55 and 1647, over 300 women in eastern England were killed for supposedly being witches after their
‘discovery’ by the notorious, self-appointed Witch finder General, Matthew Hopkins.

England was also becoming increasingly puritanical: Parliament banned the celebration of Christmas in
1647, the ban remaining in place until 1660.

Boyle returned to his estates in Ireland in 1652, aged 25. He stayed there for two years, but grew
60 increasingly unhappy in an environment he saw as unfavorable to his development as a scientist. He also
suffered a serious illness, permanently affecting his eyesight. For the rest of his life he could read only very
slowly and he had to employ people to do his writing for him.