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At the dissolution of the monasteries during the Tudor period, (1500's) the Cistercian Abbey at Fermoy and its lands
passed through the following dynasties:
Sir Richard Grenville, Robert Boyle - Scientist ('Boyle's Law'), William Forward and finally John Anderson.
Boyle's law describes the inversely proportional relationship between the absolute pressure and volume of a gas,
if the temperature is kept constant within a closed system.
The law was named after chemist and physicist Robert Boyle, who published the original law in 1662.
The law itself can be stated as follows:
For a fixed amount of an ideal gas kept at a fixed temperature, P [pressure] and V [volume] are inversely proportional
(while one doubles, the other halves).
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LIFE OF ROBERT BOYLE
Robert Boyle was born 25 January 1627 in Lismore, Co. Waterford, Ireland. He died in London 30 December, 1691 aged 64.
His father was Richard Boyle, Earl of Cork, who had left England in 1588 at the age of 22 to live in Ireland where he was appointed
clerk of the council of Munster by Elizabeth I in 1600, he bought Sir Walter Raleigh's estates in the counties of Cork, Waterford, and Tipperary
two years later.
Robert's mother, Catherine Fenton, was Richard Boyle's second wife, his first having died within a year of the birth of their first child.
Robert was the fourteenth child of his parents fifteen children.
Robert was fortunate to have the richest man in Great Britain for a father although, one would have to say, the Earl of Cork had acquired his
fortune by somewhat dubious means. He was imprisoned in England on charges of embezzlement at one stage and later was fined heavily for possessing
defective titles to some of his estates.
Robert was sent, together with one of his brothers, to study at Eton College in England in 1635. He left Eton in 1638 to be tutored privately by
one of his father's chaplains.
At the age of 12 Boyle was sent by his father, with one of his brothers, on a European tour. From Dieppe they travelled to Paris, then on to Lyon
before reaching Geneva. In Geneva Boyle studied with a private tutor French, Latin, rhetoric and religion but perhaps most importantly of all
he began to study mathematics and soon he became very good at it.
In 1641 Boyle learnt Italian in preparation for visiting there. Galileo died in his villa in Arcetri, near Florence, while Boyle was living in the
city. He was much influenced by this event and he carefully studied Galileo's works. If any one event shaped Boyle's life and directed him towards
science, then it was this.
Robert Boyle was still living in Geneva when his father died in 1642. In the summer of 1644 he sold some jewellery and used the money that he was paid
to finance his return trip to England. Back in England, Boyle lived for a while with his sister Katherine. She was thirteen years older than him and
was a lady of some importance, married to Viscount Ranelagh. England was in a chaotic state, the civil war which had began in 1642 was being fought
between King Charles and the parliament. Charles had moved to Oxford while the parliament had formed a treaty with the Scots. In return for Scots
military support they were promised the establishment of a Presbyterian church. Several battles in 1644 left both King and parliament somewhat
in disarray.
Boyle had property in England, the manor of Stalbridge, left to him by his father but the situation in the country made things difficult.
In fact although Boyle inspected his new home after four months, it was much longer before he was able to move in. This happened in March 1646
after he had spent more time with his sister and made a return trip to France to repay his debts to his tutor who continued to live there. Although
Boyle did not intend to spend long at Stalbridge, he remained there for around six years. , as my leisure and my occasions would give me leave.
Divers little essays, both in verse and prose, I have taken pains to scribble upon several subjects. ... The other humane studies I apply myself
to, are natural philosophy, the mechanics and husbandry, according to the principles of our new philosophical college ...
It is the society which would soon became the "Royal Society of London" and it provided Boyle's only contact with the world of science while
he lived a somewhat lonely life at Stalbridge. Boyle had from the time of his visit to Italy favoured the ideas of Copernicus and he now held these views deeply, together with a deep belief in
the atomic theory of matter. He was a man way ahead of his time.
This period was a civil war in England and the final outcome of the civil war turned out to his advantage. Charles I was defeated and executed but,
in 1650, Charles II landed in Scotland
and tried to regain power. Cromwell, leading the parliamentary forces, defeated the Scots in 1650, again in 1651, and the Irish were also defeated
by Cromwell in 1652.
Boyle went to Ireland in 1652 to look after his estates there. He ended up a very rich man when Cromwell apportioned Irish lands to the English
colonists. From that time on he was able to devote himself entirely to science without the need to earn money. It should be noted, however, that
Boyle was a very generous man with his money, and many around him benefited from this generosity.
He made important contributions to physics and chemistry and is best known for Boyle's law (sometimes called Mariotte's Law) describing an ideal
gas. Boyle's law appears in an appendix written in 1662 to his work New Experiments Physio-Mechanicall, Touching the Spring of the Air and its
Effects (1660). The 1660 text was the result of three years of experimenting with an air pump with the help of Hooke who he employed as his
assistant. The apparatus had been designed by Hooke and using it Boyle had discovered a whole series of important facts. He had shown, among
other things, that sound did not travel in a vacuum, he had proved that flame required air as did life, and he investigated the elastic properties
of air.
Boyle was a founding fellow of the Royal Society. He published his results on the physical properties of air through this Society. His work in
chemistry was aimed at establishing it as a mathematical science based on a mechanistic theory of matter. It is for this reason that we have decided
to include Boyle into this archive of mathematicians for, although he did not develop any mathematical ideas himself, he was one of the first to
argue that all science should be developed as an application of mathematics. Although others before him had applied mathematics to physics, Boyle
was one of the first to extend the application of mathematics to chemistry which he tried to develop as a science whose complex appearance was
merely the result on simple mathematical laws applied to simple fundamental particles.
Although his sister found several potential wives, Boyle never married. In June 1670 he had a stroke which left him paralysed but slowly he recovered his health. He continued to work and to entertain
at his London home. Visitors were so frequent that he had to restrict visits so that he had time to continue with his scientific researches,
which he did with the help of many excellent assistants.
In 1680 he declined the offer that he serve as President of the Royal Society. He explained his reasons were religious in that he could not swear
to necessary oaths. The religious side of Boyle is one which we have not mentioned in this biography, yet it was an important force in his life.
Perhaps the reason it has not been necessary to mention his strong Christian faith earlier is that to Boyle there was no conflict with religion
and a mechanistic world :-
"... for him a God who could create a mechanical universe - who could create matter in motion, obeying certain laws out of which the universe as we
know it could come into being in an orderly fashion - was far more to be admired and worshipped than a God who created a universe without scientific
law."
Excerp taken from an Article by: J J O'Connor and E F Robertson
Of course his Protestant background, with an ingrained fear of Jesuits, contributed to his sympathy for Galileo and his treatment by the Roman
Catholic Church. Boyle became a strong supporter of Galileo's philosophy and believed strongly from this time in the new approach to studying the
world through mathematics and mechanics.
