Many years ago, in 1662, Robert Boyle enunciated a famous principle much beloved of schoolchildren and meteorologists ever since. As he himself described it: "There is a spring, or an elastic power, in the air in which we live". And he went on to quantify this bounciness by asserting that the reduction in volume experienced by a gas is proportional to the extra pressure applied to it, provided the temperature remains unchanged. Boyle's Law, as we now call it, became a cornerstone of physics; it was also a first step in understanding the dynamics of the atmosphere, and is one of the basic formulae used today in computerised weather forecasting.
Boyle was the seventh son of Richard Boyle, first Earl of Cork. He was born at Lismore Castle in January 1627, packed off to Eton at the tender age of eight, and later, like many young men of his time, spent some years travelling around the continent of Europe. In Florence he visited Galileo Galilei, being in fact present at his death, and the dying astronomer seems to have whetted Boyle's appetite for scientific matters and given him a preoccupation which was to last a lifetime.
Boyle settled in Oxford in 1654, and at the University there he succeeded in constructing air pumps that were much more efficient than any existing at the time. It was by means of these that he was able to derive the "law" which bears his name. This, indeed, was not his only pronouncement on the subject: he also showed the crucial role of air in combustion, in breathing, in the circulation of the blood, and in the transmission of sound.
He also dabbled in barometers and thermometers, lamenting in the case of the latter that "we are greatly at a loss for a standard whereby to measure cold. The common instruments show us no more than the relative coldness of the air, but leave us in th e dark as to the positive degree thereof; whence we cannot communicate any idea thereof to any other person." Boyle never married, and judging by contemporary portraits, was a man of delicate, almost effeminate, aspect. A friend described him as "tall, slender and emaciated, brilliant in conversation, benevolent and tolerant, but excessively abstemious and often oppressed with low spirits".
He left Oxford in 1668 and spent the remainder of his life living quietly in London where he indulged an interest in theology, an interest which culminated in his funding of an Irish translation of the Bible by which he is fondly remembered in the relevant circles.
Robert Boyle died 310 years ago tomorrow, on December 30th, 1691.