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PORTRAITS FROM THE PAST - Robert Boyle

History buffs might remember Robert Boyle as the scientist who gave his name to Boyle’s law—a natural law that sets out the connection between pressure and volume in gases. His momentous discovery laid the basis for countless scientific developments that followed. But Robert Boyle was more than an able man of science.
 
BOYLE was born into a wealthy family at Lismore Castle, in Ireland, in 1627. That was near the beginning of what historians call the age of reason—a time when thinking men tried to free mankind from the fanaticisms that had enslaved the human race for centuries. Boyle shared that goal. In an autobiography of his early years, he gave himself the name Philaretus, meaning “Lover of Virtue.”

Boyle’s desire to learn the truth was matched by an equally intense desire to share everything he learned with others. He became a prolific writer, whose writings had a profound effect on many of his contemporaries, including the famous scientist Sir Isaac Newton. In 1660, Boyle became one of the founders of the Royal Society, a scientific institution that still exists in London, England.

A MAN OF SCIENCE

Boyle has been described as the father of chemistry. He took a completely different approach from that of the alchemists of his day. They kept their findings secret or else wrote them in obscure terms that few people outside their closed circle could understand. In contrast, Boyle openly published all the details of his work. Further, instead of simply accepting long-held hypotheses, he championed the use of controlled experiments to establish the facts.

 Boyle’s experiments supported the idea that matter was composed of what he called corpuscles, particles of some kind, that combined in different ways to form different substances.
Boyle’s approach to scientific research is summed up well in his famous book The Sceptical Chymist. There he recommends that scientists avoid being arrogant or dogmatic and be willing to admit mistakes. Boyle insisted that those with strong opinions should carefully distinguish between the things they knew to be true and the things they thought to be true.

Next will be William Whiston

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