MANY YEARS ago, in 1662, an Irishman working at Oxford University 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 a first step in understanding the dynamics of the atmosphere, and is one of the basic formulae used today in computerised weather forecasts.
Robert Boyle, seventh son of the first Earl of Cork, was born at Lismore castle 370 years ago today, on January 25th, 1627. At the tender age of eight, he was packed off to Eton and later, like many young men of his time, he spent some years wandering around the continent of Europe. In the winter of 1641, he visited Florence, where he came across the work of Galileo - who, as it happened, died while he was there. The activities of Galileo whetted Boyle's appetite for scientific matters and provided him with a preoccupation which was to last throughout his life.
Boyle returned to England in 1644, and 10 years later settled in Oxford. In his laboratory at the university, he succeeded in constructing air pumps that were much more efficient than any existing at the time, and 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 and made important contributions to the development of both.
Robert Boyle, judging by contemporary portraits, was a man of delicate, almost effeminate, aspect and was described by an acquaintance 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 the Irish translation of the Bible by which he is fondly remembered in some circles. He died, aged 64, in December, 1691, and is buried in the church of St Martin's in the Fields in London.