The Father of Chemistry

...but the first real advances in its construction were made by Boyle, and the instrument which he constructed is still one of the most valued possessions of the Royal Society, of which he was one of the founders...

...Boyle's law," which every student of physics learns early in his career, was the result of his experiments on the relation between elasticity and pressure...

...The wheel of time has now shown that that theory and the modern physicist's views as to the nature of matter are so close that only an expert can see where the difference lies...

...He was indefatigable in his efforts to propagate his own form of Christianity in all parts of the world, and among other things, was a governor of the "'Corporation for the Spread of the Gospel in New England" for some years...

...It is a strange fact that no one knows where he was buried, save that it was in London, where he resided for many years...

...It was, therefore, the idea of Boyle which led to that prolonged and foolish condemnation of the scholastic teaching of matter and form...

...He was the fourteenth child, the seventh son of the "great" Earl of Cork, and the younger brother of the Roger Boyle who afterward became first Earl of Orrery...

...The Skyptical Chymist, published by him in 1661, was the book which first declared absolute unchangeability, ab initio, of the chemical "elements," which remained, the teaching of science until the discovery of radio-activity by the Curies showed it to have been a false idea...

...for where Bacon had done no more than talk, Boyle actually put his ideas in operation...

...482 THE FATHER OF CHEMISTRY f I * HE greatest name in the list of Irish men of sci*- ence is that of Robert Boyle, said to have been described on his coffin as "the father of chemistry, and the uncle of the Earl of Cork," who was born 300 years ago, on January 25, 1627, in that picturesque castle which overhangs one of the most noted salmon rivers in Ireland, at Lismore, in Waterford County...

...483...

...Of course, being an Irishman and a Protestant, he belonged to that Calvinistic form of belief where the possibility of the assignment of an actual day, hour, and moment, as that when the person was "saved," was (and remained for a great deal more than two centuries after Boyle's death) a fact never doubted by the adherents of that belief...

...Some few years ago, a careful search was made in the vaults of some of the old London churches with a view toward ascertaining where his remains lie...

...Besides his great scientific work, Boyle was a deeply religious man, having, so he relates, been "converted as a boy during a thunder-storm...

...As to science, his claim to the position assigned to him is due to his remarkable skill in experiment, wherein he proved himself greater than Bacon...

...Otto von Guericke, in 1650, discovered the airpump...

...But the effort came to naught, and the coffin-inscription quoted above still remains a legend unsupported by evidence...

...The Royal Society sprang from an organization called the "Invisible College," which was connected with Gresham College in the City of London, and of that body Boyle was one of the first members...

...In his anxiety to understand the Gospels, he made a study of Greek, finally mastering it, as well as Hebrew, Chaldean, and Syriac...

...The tercentenary of so great a man should not pass without some word of tribute...