This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of IHeart Radio.

Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry.

And I'm Tracy V. Wilson.

Robert Boyle came up in our recent episode on Modern Inventions that are actually old, because I mentioned an old thing and said,

Robert Boyle didn't start messing around with that for a while. Um, that made me want to do an episode on him.

But then I ended up doing the Heartlib episode first because that

gives extra context to the kind of situation that was going on in England at the time regarding

science and science clicks. And now here we are at last. We are ready for the Robert Boyle of it

all. Boyle is sometimes called the father of modern chemistry.

There are other scientists that get called that, though, like Antoine LaVoisier that we've talked about before.

Boyle is more frequently described as the first modern chemist, which is closer to accurate.

But his work encompassed a lot more than that, including

being a founding member of the Royal Society. He also wrote a lot of religious tracts, and he was a

product of his time. So get ready, because that means some of his ideas were just flat out,

super yucky. Robert Boyle was born January 25th, 1627, in County Waterford, Ireland.

He was born in the family home, which was Lismore Castle.

His father was Richard Boyle, first Earl of Cork, who purchased that home, again, being a castle,

from Sir Walter Raleigh in the first years of the 1600s.

Richard is credited with repairing, renovating, and revitalizing the 12th century property

that had fallen into disrepair.

...