17th century British physicist who laid the foundations for modern chemistry.
Boyle was born at Lismore in Ireland, afterwards settling in Oxford where he established a chemical laboratory and became the
leader of a small scientific society. He invented the air pump and established Boyle's Law in about 1660. The following year,
he overthrew the four "elements" of Aristotle in
The Skeptical Chymist (1661) where he gave the modern
definition of an element as a substance which could not be analysed.
Boyle was the first to conduct chemical experiments to any degree of quantitative accuracy and amongst his credits are the
modern thermometer, the use of colour indicators to show the presence of acids, freezing mixture and the isolation of the
elements hydrogen and phosphorus.
