Robert Boyle was an Anglo-Irish natural philosopher, chemist, physicist, alchemist and inventor.
25 Facts About Robert Boyle
2.
Robert Boyle 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.
3.
Robert Boyle was a devout and pious Anglican and is noted for his writings in theology.
4.
Robert Boyle was born at Lismore Castle, in County Waterford, Ireland, the seventh son and fourteenth child of The 1st Earl of Cork and Catherine Fenton.
5.
Lord Cork, then known simply as Richard Robert Boyle, had arrived in Dublin from England in 1588 during the Tudor plantations of Ireland and obtained an appointment as a deputy escheator.
6.
Catherine Fenton, Countess of Cork, was the daughter of Sir Geoffrey Fenton, the former Secretary of State for Ireland, who was born in Dublin in 1539, and Alice Weston, the daughter of Robert Boyle Weston, who was born in Lismore in 1541.
7.
Robert Boyle received private tutoring in Latin, Greek, and French and when he was eight years old, following the death of his mother, he, and his brother Francis, were sent to Eton College in England.
8.
Robert Boyle returned to England from continental Europe in mid-1644 with a keen interest in scientific research.
9.
Robert Boyle then made his residence at Stalbridge House, between 1644 and 1652, and settled a laboratory where he conducted many experiments.
10.
From that time, Robert Boyle devoted his life to scientific research and soon took a prominent place in the band of enquirers, known as the "Invisible College", who devoted themselves to the cultivation of the "new philosophy".
11.
In 1654, Robert Boyle left Ireland for Oxford to pursue his work more successfully.
12.
Guericke's air pump was large and required "the continual labour of two strong men for divers hours", and Robert Boyle constructed one that could be operated conveniently on a desktop.
13.
Robert Boyle experimented in the laboratory she had in her home and attended her salon of intellectuals interested in the sciences.
14.
Robert Boyle was buried in the churchyard of St Martin-in-the-Fields, his funeral sermon being preached by his friend, Bishop Gilbert Burnet.
15.
Robert Boyle 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.
16.
Robert Boyle 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.
17.
Robert Boyle was an alchemist; and believing the transmutation of metals to be a possibility, he carried out experiments in the hope of achieving it; and he was instrumental in obtaining the repeal, in 1689, of the statute of Henry IV against multiplying gold and silver.
18.
Robert Boyle endorsed the view of elements as the undecomposable constituents of material bodies; and made the distinction between mixtures and compounds.
19.
Robert Boyle made considerable progress in the technique of detecting their ingredients, a process which he designated by the term "analysis".
20.
Robert Boyle further supposed that the elements were ultimately composed of particles of various sorts and sizes, into which they were not to be resolved in any known way.
21.
Robert Boyle studied the chemistry of combustion and of respiration, and conducted experiments in physiology, where he was hampered by the "tenderness of his nature" which kept him from anatomical dissections, especially vivisections, though he knew them to be "most instructing".
22.
Robert Boyle attempted to tackle complex theological questions using methods derived from his scientific practices.
23.
Robert Boyle supported the policy that the Bible should be available in the vernacular language of the people.
24.
Robert Boyle was a pioneer studying races, and he believed that all human beings, no matter how diverse their physical differences, came from the same source: Adam and Eve.
25.
Robert Boyle studied reported stories of parents' giving birth to different coloured albinos, so he concluded that Adam and Eve were originally white and that Caucasians could give birth to different coloured races.