Robert Boyle | Biography

For centuries people believed that everything was made of just three or four substances, which were mistakenly called elements. It was Boyle who first set science on the right track and asserted the true nature of elements and compounds.

Boyle's father was an Englishman who made his fortune in Ireland and became a successful landowner there. Boyle was his seventh son and the youngest of fourteen children. By the time Boyle was born, his father had become an earl and was one of the wealthiest men in the country. Like his father, Boyle was an industrious worker; before he entered the prestigious Eton school at the age of eight, he was already speaking Greek and Latin. His passion for reading and learning continued to grow, and Boyle proved to be a gifted student with an excellent memory.

At an early age, Boyle and his brother went to Europe with a tutor to study French, mathematics, and many other subjects. For six years, they lived in Switzerland and traveled extensively through France and Italy, where Boyle learned of Galileo's experiments on the effects of gravity and other physical laws. When Boyle was 13, he witnessed a sudden, violent thunderstorm that changed his whole outlook on life. He developed a religious faith which he felt did not contradict scientific beliefs but instead reinforced his admiration for the creator of such a complex universe. From then on, he was a devout Christian, and he learned several ancient languages, including Hebrew and Aramaic, so that he could read the Bible in its original texts.

A civil war between England and Ireland demanded Boyle's return from continental Europe, and he reached home in 1645. By this time, Boyle had become interested in performing experiments in order to understand the way things work. Previously, people believed in making up a theory and then judging how well the facts fit the theory. Boyle, however, agreed with the philosopher Francis Bacon (1561-1626) that facts should be observed first, and then a theory should be developed to explain them. Boyle and other scholars interested in experimentation began meeting regularly in London, England, to discuss these new ideas. At first, they called themselves the "Invisible College," but when King Charles II (1630-1685) was restored to the throne in 1663, he granted a charter to the group of scientists; the group thus became known as the Royal Society.

When Boyle moved to Oxford in 1654, he met many more scientists and became interested in chemistry, because of its relation to medicine. During his 14 years at Oxford, Boyle contributed greatly to scientific philosophy in the fields of physics and chemistry. He set up an elaborate research laboratory and hired skilled assistants to conduct experiments. Unlike most scientists of his day, Boyle believed in meticulously recording his experiments and publishing them so that others could repeat his tests and confirm the data. He is credited with pioneering the modern scientific method and today this practice is universal in the research world.

In 1661 Boyle published his most famous work, The Sceptical Chymist, which revolutionized scientific thought and formed the basis of modern chemistry. In this work, Boyle defined an element as the simplest form of matter, one that cannot be broken down into any simpler form or changed into a different substance. Boyle's ideas contradicted beliefs held ever since the ancient Greeks proposed that all things are made of only four elements--air, earth, fire, and water--which could be changed, or transmuted, into other substances. In another version of this idea, only three substances existed in nature (salt, sulfur, and mercury). But according to Boyle, none of these substances were true elements. Boyle argued that elements could be identified only by scientific experimentation. He also pointed out that a compound will usually have chemical properties that are very different from its parent elements.

Boyle's concept of an element arose from his experiments with gases, and he was the first scientist to succeed in collecting hydrogen in a device now called a pneumatic trough. In 1660 Boyle discovered a fundamental law of physics that helps explain the behavior of gases. When a gas is pressurized, Boyle found that the amount of space it takes up is related to the amount of pressure being exerted on it, as long as the gas's temperature doesn't change. For example, if the pressure on a given quantity of gas is doubled, the gas's volume is cut in half; if pressure is tripled, volume is reduced to one-third. (This relationship is called inversely proportional.) Boyle's law, along with a similar law that explains the effects of temperature, allows chemists today to calculate the volume of gasses under any pressure or temperature conditions. Boyle also realized that if air could be compressed, it must be composed of tiny particles separated by space. It was this conclusion that led Boyle to envision a universe composed of numerous tiny particles, and, in doing so, he anticipated the modern concept of atomic theory.

Vacuums were poorly understood but of much scientific interest to Boyle and his assistant, Robert Hook. Air pumps were used in early laboratories to create a vacuum inside cylinders. Robert Hook built an improved air pump based on German engineer, Otto von Guerricke's air pump design. Together, Boyle and Hook developed a better vaccum. This new vacuum had better placement of the pumps valves and a preferable method of cranking its piston and supporting the air pump's cylinder. Boyle also proved for the first time that all objects, no matter how light or heavy, fall through a vacuum at the same speed. This showed, as Galileo had predicted, that the force of gravity is uniform. In another experiment, Boyle demonstrated that the sound of a clock ticking could not be heard in a vacuum, proving that sound waves depend on air for their transmission. Boyle showed, however, that electrical attraction could be felt through a vacuum.

Boyle was also interested in the nature of color, and he accurately described how the absorption and reflection of light produces the appearance of black and white, studying the changes in color that occur in certain plant extracts, such as litmus. He discovered that these substances, now called indicators, can be used to distinguish acids from bases. Boyle went on to develop tests for identifying other substances, such as copper, silver, and sulfur, via chemical reaction. He not only coined the term analysis in its modern sense, but also encouraged generations of chemists to determine the composition of substances through meticulous experimentation. In the late 1660s Boyle became the first scientist to study the phenomenon of bioluminescence, showing that certain bacteria and other organisms will glow in the dark if supplied with air. Boyle also found that water begins to expand just before it freezes. Throughout this period, Boyle and his staff published immense amounts of information for use by other scholars and scientists.

In 1668 Boyle returned to London to live with his favorite sister, Lady Ranelagh. In 1680 he invented the first match by coating a piece of coarse paper with phosphorus. He produced a flame by drawing a sulfur-tipped wooden splint through a fold in the paper. Also in 1680, he was elected president of the Royal Society, but he declined the honor, believing that the oath of office would conflict with his strict religious beliefs, and he continued to refuse all titles and other honorary positions. In his later years, Boyle wrote about medicine and diseases and devoted greater effort to promoting Christian ideals; in his will he left money for a series of lectures to defend Christianity from atheists and other "notorious infidels."