Robert Boyle

Robert Boyle (Lismore Castle, Waterford County, Ireland, January 25, 1627 – London, December 30, 1691). British chemist and physicist, mainly known for Boyle's law (1662) that states that the pressure of a fixed amount of gas is inversely proportional to its volume. The experimental work involved in this law was by the aid of an air pump invented in 1634 by Otto von Guericke, the Burgomaster of Magdeburg. The pump was greatly improved by Boyle in corporation with his assistant Robert Hooke.

Boyle was the first in modern times to state that a chemical compound consists of small particles, which he called "corpuscles". He was one of the first to prepare phosphorus (see phosphorus for more details about the discovery of the element) and the first to describe hydrogen gas. Although he was one of the first chemists in the modern sense of the word, he still believed, as the alchemists did, that transmutation of individual chemical elements was possible.

Boyle's main contributions to chemistry are the following: (1) he realized that chemistry is worthy of study for its own sake, and not merely an aid to alchemy (although he did not reject the latter); (2) he introduced rigorous experimental methods into chemistry; (3) he gave a clear definition of a chemical element and showed by experiment that the four elements of Aristotle and the three principles of the alchemists (mercury, sulfur, and salt) did not deserve to be called elements or principles at all, since none of them could be extracted from bodies, e.g., from metals.

Boyle was one of the founders of the Royal Society of London in 1660.

Reference

Desmond Reilly, Robert Boyle and his background, Journal of Chemical Education, vol. 28, pp. 178 - 183 (1951) Online