He was the fourteenth child in his family: Who is Robert Boyle?

(1627-1691) Irish-born English chemist. He pioneered the establishment of particle philosophy and experimental methods in chemistry. Robert Such was born on January 25, 1627, in Bismore Castle in Cork, Ireland. His father was a Cork area aristocrat. As the fourteenth child of his family, he learned Latin and French when he was a child and went to Eton for education at the age of 8. In 1638, when he was only 11 years old, he went on an educational trip with his private teacher to various scientific centers in Europe, especially in Switzerland; After studying the works of Galileo in Italy, he returned to his country in 1644. When the civil war that started in Ireland in 1645 caused the destruction of the family fortune, he could not find the necessary scientific study environment here and went to Stalbridge in 1651; Two years later, he settled in Oxford, the most important science center of the period. Finding the environment he sought for his scientific studies here, he began working on the development of a new philosophy in science with his assistant Robert Hooke at University College. Later, these studies, which were carried out together with Hooke, a famous scientist, and the leading thinkers of the period, were known as the Invisible College for a while because they were not conducted under an official structure or name, but with the support of Charles, it was institutionalized under the name of Royal Society in 1663. Although Boyle was elected as the president of this society in 1680, he did not accept the duty on the grounds that the form of oath he had to take was contrary to his religious beliefs.

He never married in London, where he settled in 1668, and continued to live with his sister, Lady Ranelagh. Although his scholarly reputation was widespread, Boyle always avoided pompous meetings, honors, and titles; preferring a simple life, he spent most of his time working in the laboratory he set up behind his house. Faced with constant health problems throughout his life, he showed a close interest in medicine; A series of books on medicine, published between 1684 and 1691, are full of interesting, if not original, observations. As he got older, his interest in religion grew. He believed that religion and science should support each other. For this reason, he wrote many articles on religion and natural sciences. When he died on December 30, 1691, he left part of his fortune to hold conferences (Boyle Conferences) in defense of Christianity against non-believers.

He is especially known for his work on air pressure. Before his time, the developments in this area were very limited, and it was not even explained why the water could not be raised above 10.36 m with a simple suction and pumping pump. The general belief was that nature does not like emptiness, and therefore, water fills the empty space when the plunger moves. The existence of air pressure was also proven only in 1643 when Toricelli invented barometry. Boyle's approach to these problems was quite different. When he read the publication about the air pump that Otto von Guericke had invented in 1657, he immediately moved on to the design of a better pump and commissioned his assistant Robert Hooke to build it. When the new pump was completed in 1658, he began experiments to describe various properties of such air. In one experiment, when he connected a U-tube barometer to a vacuum pump, he observed that the mercury level in the tube decreased with the application of vacuum. As a result of this experiment, he interpreted that the mercury column in the barometer stopped at a certain level with the air pressure. In 1660 he published the first results of these experiments in his book "New Physico-Mechanical Experiments on the Compressibility and Effects of Air".

Again in an evacuated tube, Boyle proved Galileo's claim that all matter falls at the same speed in a vacuum by showing that a piece of lead and a feather fall simultaneously.

Boyle has an important place in the development of atomic theory. He became interested in this subject as a result of experiments on the compressibility of air; Since air can be compressed, he thought it consisted of particles with large spaces between them. As the pressure increased, the air particles were getting closer to each other, and in the light of these experiments, with the influence of Gassendi, he adopted the atomic theory, thus the suggestions of Democritus were revived two thousand years later. However, as such, as he explained in his book The Sceptical Chymist published in 1661, he chose to explain the elements with scientific experiments instead of the mystical concepts of Greek philosophy.

He defined such elements as elementary, simple, and pure particles that could not be broken down into smaller pieces.

Boyle conducted research on a wide variety of subjects in chemistry and physics within the framework of particle theory. He explained the role of air in the communication of sound. He continued his experiments on the calcination of metals (the increase in weight by heating in the air); showed that combustion cannot occur without air. He performed experiments that determined the properties of acids and bases, as well as determine the specific gravity of various solids and liquids. In addition to these, he studied the expansion force caused by the freezing of water, and the refractive index of light in liquids, and conducted experiments on very different subjects such as crystals, colors, and hydrostatics. Boyle, who discovered acetone with methyl alcohol, was the first to systematically define acids and use colored reagents to identify acids.

Such is also one of the first discoverers of the element phosphorus. In 1660, he performed the separation of phosphorus from urine and determined various chemical and physical properties of this element. Besides such scientific studies, he was also interested in alchemy and believed that other elements could be converted into gold.

To this end, he persuaded the English government in 1689 to repeal the law prohibiting the activities of converting elements into gold.

Boyle's versatile work, especially with his contributions to three main issues, pioneered the establishment of contemporary chemistry. First, chemistry proves to be worthy of study even if it has no contribution to the practice of medicine and other related disciplines. Secondly, he brought a widespread and effective experimental method to the science of chemistry and, unlike most of his contemporaries, advocated the prompt and detailed publication of scientific studies and the results obtained with the aim of helping other researchers. Third, he developed the atomic theory and explained the elements within the framework of this theory, and proved with his experiments that the simple concepts of Aristotle and alchemists were not valid. However, he did not defend the atomic theory passionately enough, so the scientists who came after him were not able to take the atomic theory further. It took another hundred years and Lavoisier to approach the problem for the theory to develop in its current sense.