biography
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1627–91)
|
| biography:
| Chemist and natural philosopher, born at Lismore Castle, Co Waterford, S Ireland. He was educated at Eton, went to the European mainland for six years, then devoted himself to science. Settling at Oxford in 1654, with Robert Hooke as his assistant, he carried out experiments on air, vacuum, combustion, and respiration. In 1661 he published his Sceptical Chymist, in which he criticized the current theories of matter, and defined the chemical element as the practical limit of chemical analysis. In 1662 he arrived at Boyle's law, which states that the pressure and volume of gas are inversely proportional. He also researched into calcination of metals, properties of acids and alkalis, specific gravity, crystallography, and refraction, and first prepared phosphorus. As a director of the East India Company (for which he had procured the Charter) he worked for the propagation of Christianity in the East, circulated at his own expense translations of the Scriptures, and by bequest founded the Boyle Lectures in defence of Christianity. |
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