98 Scientific Proceedings, Royal Dublin Society. 
lesser mind. Boyle stands before the world as the great pioneer 
in the application of the Experimental Method. By its aid he 
shed light on many dark places in science. Many valuable methods . 
and facts have their origin in Boyle’s labours. His wide intellect 
made its influence felt over the entire range of the science of the 
17th century. 
Born in 1627 at Lismore, county Waterford, he was an 
accomplished boy of fifteen in that eventful year when Galileo died 
and Newton was born. He was, therefore, Newton’s predecessor by 
fifteen years, and beginning systematic experimental work when but 
eighteen years of age, he stood before England for nearly twenty 
years as high priest of the Baconian method before the lustre of 
Newton’s work began to dazzle men’s eyes. The influence of 
Boyle on Newton and on Robert Hooke must have been immense. 
His discoveries agitated the whole country. Notwithstanding the 
many brilliant contemporaries who sprang up around him, he 
retained his great influence, although not, indeed, his supremacy, 
to the last days of a life of sixty-four years duration. Boyle’s most 
important work was done for chemical science. Hveryone 
remembers the celebrated words which named him ‘the father 
of Chemistry and brother of the Harl of Cork.” He first 
distinguished between a mixture and a chemical compound. He 
defined the elements in a manner strangely prophetic of the most 
modern speculations of our own times—as all compounds of one 
universal matter, to the various modes of movement and grouping 
of which the constitution of the entire visible part of the universe 
was to be ascribed. He-showed more clearly than his predecessors 
that air was necessary to combustion and respiration. He 
prepared phosphorous and hydrogen, although he failed to recognise 
the independent nature of the last. He first used vegetable 
colour tests for alkalinity and acidity, and introduced the use of 
chemical reagents into investigation. He believed heat to bea 
brisk molecular motion and not a material substance, thus 
forestalling in part ideas which only assumed full sway in this 
present century. He first suggested the freezing and boiling 
