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Hello on the 7th of January 1692 a vast congregation filled the Church of

St Martin in the field for the funeral of one of the country's most celebrated

thinkers. The Bishop of Salisbury Burnett, preached a sermon in which he

prayed the deceased for his constant looking into nature and yet more constant study of

religion and a directing and improving of the one by the other. The dead man was Robert Boyle,

a founding member of the Royal Society in 1660 and a major force in 17th century natural philosophy. His work covered many fields from theology

to medicine and oceanography, but his best known for his original work on the

nature of gases and his pioneering chemical experiments which have led some to regard

him as the first modern scientists. We need to discuss the life and work of Robert Boiler,

Simon Schaffer, Professor of the History of Science at the University of Cambridge, Michael

Hunter, Emeritus Professor of History at Birkbeck College University of London, and Anna

Marie Rous, Senior Lecture in the History of Science and Medicine at the University of Lincoln.

Simon Schapper, Robert Bo was born in 1627 in Ireland, the youngest son of 14 children. Would you say a bit more about his childhood?

He was the seventh son of one of the most powerful men in Ireland,

Richard Boyle Earl of Court, the Great Earl,

who for a long time in Boyle's life represented

a very major influence. Richard Boyle was a leader of the settler community in Ireland, an enemy of some English attempts to rein in their power, the purchaser of Walter

Rallie's estates, fabulously wealthy and landed.

...