Biography of
Robert Boyle

• Born: January 25, 1627 - Place: Lismore, Ireland
• Died: December 30, 1691 - Place: London, England
• Father: Richard Boyle, Earl of Cork (One of the richest men in Great Britain at the time).
• Mother: Catherine Fenton

Robert was the seventh son (and fourteenth child) of his parent’s fifteen children (twelve of the fifteen survived childhood).
 
When born, his father was in his sixty's and his mother her forty's. Both believed that the best upbringing for young children, at least up to the time they began their education, should be provided away from their parents. Thus, early on, Robert was sent away to be brought up in the country.
 
When old enough, in 1635, Robert, along with one of his brothers, was sent to study at Eton College in England. At this time, the school was becoming a fashionable place where important people sent their sons. While there, the two young Boyle brothers lived in the headmaster's house.
 
Boyle's education was clearly going well. He was popular with both his headmaster and his fellow pupils. However, perhaps he had been given too much special attention by the headmaster for when he retired, Boyle seemed unable to fit in with the educational discipline the new headmaster brought to the school.
 
Realizing that his sons were not progressing well at school under the new headmaster, the Earl took them away from Eton in November 1638. After this Boyle was tutored privately by one of his father's chaplains.
 
At the age of 12, the Earl sent Boyle, along with one of his brothers, on a European tour. They travelled to Paris, Lyon, and Geneva.
In Geneva Boyle studied French, Latin, rhetoric, and religion with a private tutor.
He also spent time playing tennis and fencing.
 
It was at this time he began to study mathematics and became quite familiar with arithmetic, geometry, with its subordinates, the doctrine of the sphere, that of the globe, and fortification.
 
In 1641 Boyle learned Italian in preparation for visiting Italy. In September of that year Boyle and his tutor were in Venice.
By the beginning of 1642 they were in Florence.
 
While there, Galileo died. Boyle was influenced by this event and carefully studied Galileo's works. It could be said that if any one event shaped Boyle's life and directed him towards science, then it was this.
His Protestant background, with an ingrained fear of Jesuits, contributed to his sympathy for Galileo and his treatment by the Roman Catholic Church. Boyle became a supporter of Galileo's philosophy and believed strongly from this time in the new approach to studying the world through mathematics and mechanics.
 
By May 1642, Boyle and his tutor were in Marseilles waiting for money from Boyle's father so that he could complete the journey home. This did not arrive, merely a letter from his father explaining that a rebellion in Munster was fully occupying his time and money.
Boyle returned to Geneva where it appears he had lived mainly on his tutor's earnings that he later repaid.
 
The Earl of Cork died in September 1643. Robert Boyle was still living in Geneva when his father died.
 
In the summer of 1644 Boyle sold some jewelry and used the money to finance his return trip to England.
 
Back in England, Boyle lived for a time with his sister Katherine. She was thirteen years older than him and was a lady of some importance, married to Viscount Ranelagh.
 
England was in a chaos, the civil war which had began in 1642 was being fought between King Charles and the parliament. Charles had moved to Oxford while the parliament had formed a treaty with the Scots. In return for the Scots military support, they were promised the establishment of a Presbyterian church. Several battles in 1644 left both King and parliament somewhat in disarray.
 
Boyle had property in England, the manor of Stalbridge, which was left to him by his father. But, the situation in the country made things difficult. After four months, he inspected his new home. After a long wait, in March 1946, he was able to move in.
 
Although Boyle did not intend to spend long at Stalbridge, he remained there for around six years. He admits in a letter sent to his old tutor:
 
“As for my studies, I have had the opportunity to prosecute them but by fits and snatches, as my leisure and my occasions would give me leave. Divers little essays, both in verse and prose, I have taken pains to scribble upon several subjects. ... The other humane studies I apply myself to, are natural philosophy, the mechanics and husbandry, according to the principles of our new philosophical college ... “
 
This "new philosophical college" is also called by Boyle the "Invisible College" later in the letter. It is the society that would soon become the "Royal Society of London" and it provided Boyle's only contact with the world of science while he lived a somewhat lonely life at Stalbridge.
 
It was discussions in the Invisible College that led to Boyle reading Oughtred's Clavis Mathematica as well as the works of Mersenne and Gassendi.
 
From the time of his visit to Italy, Boyle favored the ideas of Copernicus and he now held these views deeply, together with a deep belief in the atomic theory of matter. In the Invisible College these views were considered to be those of the new natural philosophy.
 
This period of time was difficult for Boyle for he tried hard not to be forced to take sides in the civil war. His loyalties were somewhat divided by his father having been a staunch Royalist and his sister Katherine a staunch Parliamentarian. Basically he had little sympathy with either side, but the final outcome of the civil war turned out to his advantage. Charles I was defeated and executed but, in 1650, Charles II landed in Scotland and tried to regain power. Cromwell, leading the parliamentary forces, defeated the Scots in 1650 and again in 1651. Also, the Irish were defeated by Cromwell in 1652.
 
In 1652 Boyle went to Ireland to look after his estates there. He ended up a very rich man when Cromwell apportioned Irish lands to the English colonists.
 
From that time on, he was able to devote himself entirely to science without the need to earn money. Boyle was also a very generous man with his money benefiting many around him through his generosity.
 
Boyle met John Wilkins, the leader of the Invisible College, in London when he visited there in 1653. At this time Wilkins had just been appointed as Warden of Wadham College in Oxford and he was planning to run the Invisible College from there. He strongly encouraged Boyle to join them in Oxford. Boyle decided to go to Oxford and continued to carry out his scientific experiments.
 
At Oxford, he joined a group of forward looking scientists. Included were John Wilkins, John Wallis, Professor of Geometry, Seth Ward, Professor of Astronomy, and Christopher Wren, successor to Ward 1661.
 
From 1654 Boyle lived in Oxford, although he never held any university post.
 
He made important contributions to physics and chemistry and is best known for Boyle's law (sometimes called Mariotte's Law) describing an ideal gas. Boyle's law appears in an appendix written in 1662 to his work New Experiments Physio-Mechanical, Touching the Spring of the Air and its Effects (1660).
 
The 1660 text was the result of experimenting three years with an air pump. Hooke, his assistant, had designed the apparatus. By using it, Boyle had discovered a whole series of important facts. He had shown, among other things, that sound did not travel in a vacuum. He proved that flame required air as did life, and he investigated the elastic properties of air.
 
The 1662 appendix did not only contain Boyle's law, which relates volume and pressure in a gas, but it also contained a defense of Boyle's work on the vacuum, which appeared in the main text.
 
Many scientists argued that a vacuum could not exist and claimed that Boyle's results obtained with the vacuum pump must be the result of some as yet “undiscovered force.”
 
Another book by Boyle in 1666 was called Hydrostatic paradoxes. It is a penetrating critique of Pascal's work on hydrostatics, full of acute observations upon Pascal's experimental method, and a presentation of a series of important and ingenious experiments on fluid pressure.
 
In The Sceptical Chemist (1661) Boyle argued against Aristotle's view of the four elements of earth, air, fire and water. He argued that matter was composed of corpuscles which themselves were differently built up of different configurations of primary particles. Boyle's ideas that the primary particles move freely in fluids, less freely in solids, followed Descartes. However, Descartes did not believe in a vacuum, rather he believed in an all pervading ether. Boyle rejected that idea as he had conducted many experiments which led him to believe in a vacuum however, found no experimental evidence of the ether. He did concur with Descartes in his overall belief that the world was basically a complex system, governed by a small number of simple mathematical laws.
 
Boyle also studied optics. In particular colour. However, he was not so successful. He published Experiments and considerations touching colours in 1664 but completely acknowledged that Newton's ideas, published in 1672, should replace his own.
 
Boyle was a founding fellow of the Royal Society. He published his results on the physical properties of air through this Society.
 
His work in chemistry was aimed at establishing it as a mathematical science based on a mechanistic theory of matter. While Boyle did not develop any mathematical ideas himself, he was one of the first to argue that all science should be developed as an application of mathematics.
 
Although there were others who had applied mathematics to physics, Boyle was one of the first to extend the application of mathematics to chemistry. This he tried to develop as a science whose complex appearance was merely the result on simple mathematical laws applied to simple fundamental particles.
 
In 1668 Boyle left Oxford and went to live with his sister Lady Ranelagh in London. There he formed some common scientific interests with a neighbor, Thomas Sydenham, a physician.
 
In 1669 his sister's husband died.
 
In June 1670 Boyle had a stroke, which left him paralyzed. Slowly he recovered his health and continued his scientific researches, which he did with the help of many excellent assistants.
 
In 1680 he declined the offer to serve as President of the Royal Society. He explained his reasons were religious in that he could not swear to necessary oaths.
 
A Protestant, The religious side of Boyle was an important force in his life. To Boyle there was no conflict with religion and a mechanistic world. For him;
“a God who could create a mechanical universe - who could create matter in motion, obeying certain laws out of which the universe as we know it could come into being in an orderly fashion - was far more to be admired and worshipped than a God who created a universe without scientific law. “
 
Biographical Composite adapted from articles by J.J. O'Connor, E.F. Robertson