Robert Boyle

About this figure

Robert Boyle (1627-1691) was an Irish-born natural philosopher and one of the founding figures of experimental chemistry in England. The son of the Earl of Cork, Boyle used his wealth to support a life devoted to experimentation, much of it conducted with the help of skilled assistants, including Robert Hooke, who built the air pumps central to Boyle's studies of gases.

Boyle is best known today for the law that bears his name, describing the inverse relationship between the pressure and volume of a gas at constant temperature, which he established through careful experiments with trapped air. His 1661 work The Sceptical Chymist challenged the Aristotelian theory of four elements and the alchemical theory of three principles, arguing instead that matter was composed of small particles that combined to form the varied substances observed in nature, and pressing chemists to rely on experiment rather than inherited authority.

Boyle was a founding member of the Royal Society of London and one of the most prolific experimenters and writers of his generation, publishing on subjects ranging from combustion and respiration to the properties of cold. He was also a devout Anglican who wrote on theology and funded the translation of scripture into several languages, and he endowed a series of lectures, still known as the Boyle Lectures, intended to defend Christianity against atheism. Boyle never married, lived for much of his later life with his sister Katherine in London, and died there in 1691.

Written by Epoch Voices. Not the figure’s own words.