Important Chemists in History: Robert Boyle
"The Sceptical Chymist"
September 2011
Robert Boyle (1627-1691). Irish chemist and natural philosopher. As a son of the Earl of Cork, Boyle was independently wealthy and so was able to live the life of an independent scientific "virtuoso." Best known for his advocacy of a mechanical corpuscular or particulate approach to physics and chemistry, as opposed to the older hylomorphic doctrines of Aristotle and Paracelsus, Boyle authored numerous books, of which his most famous was perhaps The Sceptical Chymist, first published in 1661. He is known to students of introductory chemistry largely through his discovery of Boyle's law (1662), which states that the volume of a gas varies inversely with applied pressure at constant temperature.
Courtesy of Professor William Jensen, Oesper Chair of the History of Chemistry and Chemical Education, University of Cincinnati