Philosopher, Chemist, Physicist, Alchemist, Pious, all these describe Robert Boyle, yet none do him justice. An excellent writer and theologian, Boyle got bitten by the "experimental bug" and decided to put his money, and his devotion, into experimental science, while still keeping his faith in God.
Robert Boyle was born on January 25, 1627, in Lismore Castle, in Ireland. The 14th child of Richard Boyle, the first Earl of Cork, Robert grew up as part of the aristocracy. A christian by birth, Boyle's faith in god was heightened during a thunderstorm while he was living with a Mr. W. Douch. He claimed that the lightning and thunder caused him to experience a "religious conversion not unlike that of St. Paul."1 Robert later studied briefly at Eton, with other children from wealthy families. However, Boyle left the school, and instead traveled through Switzerland, Italy and France with his tutor and older brother Francis. With his tutor he studied philosophy, theology, several different languages, mathematics and the then modern physics of Francis Bacon, Descartes and Galileo.
In 1644 he returned to England and settled into one of his late father's estates at Stalbridge in Dorset. Here, he spent his time writing, while he lived with one of his sisters. She would take care of him and keep the house in shape while Boyle delved into the "soft sciences," such as philosophy, Christianity and religion in general. For most of 1649, Boyle kept trying to get a furnace installed into his home so he could experiment in chemistry and physics. When the lab was finally set up near the end of 1649, his writings changed to show his new-found enthusiasm for experimental knowledge.
Either in late 1655 or early 1656 Robert Boyle moved again, this time to Oxford University. Here he joined a small group of England's brightest scientists, mathematicians, philosophers and physicians. In 1662 the group was officially chartered and dubbed The Royal Society. In 1680, Robert Boyle was elected president of the group, but declined the honor, stating his religion would not allow him to do so. He spent his time at Oxford continuing to write several essays as well as experimental results. This is important because it went against the alchemist idea of secrecy. All of his works at this time were written in English, but several were translated into Latin so they could be read by more people of different cultures.
Robert Boyle died on December 30, 1691 in London, England. He was buried at the Church of Saint-Martin-in-the-Fields next to one of his sisters. The church was later demolished and there is no record as to where his corpse was moved.
One of Boyle's most important works was The Spring and Weight of the Air, published in 1660, and again in 1662. The first publishing conveyed his and his assistant's new idea for a vacuum pump. Boyle's pump could easily be operated by just one man, as opposed to the one designed by Von Guericke, whose pump needed two men to be operated and produced soem questionable results. Boyle used his pump to show that air was necessary for the movement of sound, as well as fire and the sustenance of life. The second publishing contained Boyle's famous experiment, the one that proved PV = k, also known as Boyle's Law. To conduct this experiment, Boyle made a very large J-shaped piece of glass tubing, which contained Mercury, and a trapped air pocket in the lip of the J, as shown in the bad ascii below.
| |
_____ | |
|air| |~~~|
| | | |
|~~~| | |
| |_________| |
| Mercury |
|_________________|
Boyle took measurements of the air pockets in varying degrees of pressure, both above and below the normal atmospheric level. He come up with PV=k, where P is the pressure, V is the volume and K is a constant. This is very useful because with this law, if one knows the volume and pressure of one contained gas, and all the gas is pumped into a new container, the pressure can be found, as P1V1 = k = P2V2. Or if you have a gas in one container, and need to find the volume of a container for a required pressure . However, Boyle thought this would only be true with mixed air, the same kind we're breathing now, as opposed to every gas.
Bibliography
New Experiments Physico-Mechanical, Touching the Spring of Air and its Effects (1660)
Certain Physiological Essays (1661)
The Sceptical Chymist (1661)
Some Considerations touching the Usefulness of Experimental Natural Philosophy (1663, 1671)
Experiments and Considerations touching Colours (1664)
New Experiments and Observations touching Cold (1665)
Hydrostatical Paradoxes (1666)
The Origin of Forms and Qualities (1666)
Of the Systematical or Cosmical Qualities of Things (1671)
Excellency of Theology, Compar'd with Natural Philosophy (1674)
Experiments, Notes, &c., about the Mechanical Origin or Production of Divers Particular Qualities (1675)
Discourse of Things above Reason (1681)
Experiments and Considerations about the Porosity of Bodies (1684)
Memoirs for the Natural History of Human Blood (1684)
Of the Reconcileableness of Specifick Medicines to the Corpuscular Philosophy (1685)
Free Enquiry into the Vulgarly Receiv'd Notion of Nature (1686)
Disquisition about the Final Causes of Natural Things (1688)
The Christian Virtuoso (1690)
Medicina Hydrostatica (1690)
Experimenta & Observationes Physicae (1691)
Sources:
http://www.woodrow.org/teachers/chemistry/institutes/1992/Boyle.html
http://es.rice.edu/ES/humsoc/Galileo/Catalog/Files/boyle.html
http://www.bbk.ac.uk/boyle/biog.html
http://www.chemheritage.org/EducationalServices/chemach/fore/rb.html
http://dbhs.wvusd.k12.ca.us/GasLaw/Gas-Boyle-Data.html