25 January: Robert Boyle

Born on this date in 1627 was Robert Boyle, the Irish scientist known for the formulation of Boyle's law. 10 facts about Robert Boyle:

1. He was born in County Waterford, South East Ireland. His father was Richard Boyle and his mother was Catherine Fenton, daughter of Geoffrey Fenton, secretary of state for Ireland. He was their 14^th child and seventh son. Richard Boyle was the 1st earl of Cork and a very wealthy man, sometimes described as the “first colonial millionaire”.

2. Boyle attended Eton between the ages of eight and eleven after which he was tutored at the earl’s English base, Stalbridge House. He was also sent on a grand tour of Europe with his brother, Francis and a tutor, Isaac Marcombes.

3. After spending time travelling and studying in Europe he returned to England and settled in Dorset for a few years before moving to Oxford, where he employed one Robert Hooke as his assistant. Together they created the vacuum chamber or air-pump, the best known piece of equipment associated with Boyle.

4. At a time when the “truth” would be arrived at by philosophical discussion by intellectuals, Boyle favoured finding things out by experiments, and observing what actually happened. He was the first prominent scientist to perform controlled experiments and publish his work.

5. He is best known for Boyle's Law. This law states that if the volume of a gas is decreased, the pressure increases proportionally. His conjecture from observing this was that gases must be made of tiny particles. He defined the modern idea of an 'element', as well as introducing many chemical tests still used as standards today, including the litmus test.

6. He wasn’t the first to notice the relationship between pressure and volume. Other scientists called Richard Towneley and Henry Power had already noted it, but it was Boyle who did the experiments to prove it and published his findings in 1662. In 1697 a French physicist called Edme Mariotte discovered the same law independent of Boyle, so you might hear Boyle’s Law referred to as Mariotte’s law.

7. He made a “wish list” of things he would like to see invented. His list included: the "art of flying", "perpetual light", "making armour light and extremely hard", "a ship to sail with all winds, and a ship not to be sunk", "practicable and certain way of finding longitudes", "potent drugs to alter or exalt imagination, waking, memory and other functions and appease pain, procure innocent sleep, harmless Dreams, etc." and curing disease by transplantation. Most of the items on his list came true.

8. He was a devout Anglican as well as a scientist. Science, to him, was all about understanding God by studying His creation and was therefore an important religious duty. Unlike most scientists today, he believed religion and science supported each other. As well as his scientific writings, he wrote religious tracts. He even considered taking holy orders in order to take up an offer of the provostship of Eton College, but declined, because he felt that his writings on religious subjects would have greater weight coming from a layman. As director of the East India Company, he sponsored many religious missions, and funded the translation of The Bible into several languages. He even turned down the presidency of the Royal Society in London that he’d helped create because he would be required to swear an oath which went against his beliefs.

9. He never married. He had a close relationship with his sister, Katherine, Vicountess Ranelagh, and lived with her in her house in Pall Mall, London, later in his life. She was interested in science, too, and by all accounts helped him considerably with his work, contributing ideas and editing manuscripts, possibly even writing some of her own. Her contribution was acknowledged at the time, but was later played down and virtually erased by historians.

10. Boyle only survived his sister by a week. His health had never been good, and when she died, he became ill and soon followed. He was 64 years old. He left his papers to the Royal Society and also money to establish a series of lectures in defence of Christianity. These lectures, known as the Boyle Lectures, continue to this day.

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