Robert Boyle

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Robert Boyle, a pioneering scientist and a founder member of the Royal Society. Born in Ireland in 1627, Boyle was one of the first natural philosophers to conduct rigorous experiments, laid the foundations of modern chemistry and derived Boyle’s Law, describing the physical properties of gases. In addition to his experimental work he left a substantial body of writings about philosophy and religion; his piety was one of the most important factors in his intellectual activities, prompting a celebrated dispute with his contemporary Thomas Hobbes.

→ Play on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Simon Schaffer 24 episodes
  Professor of the History of Science at the University of Cambridge
• Michael Hunter 2 episodes
  Emeritus Professor of History at Birkbeck College, University of London
• Anna Marie Roos No other episodes
  Senior Lecturer in the History of Science and Medicine at the University of Lincoln

Reading list

• Boyle: Between God and Science
  Michael Hunter (Yale University Press, 2009) Google Books →
• Robert Boyle: A Free Enquiry into the Vulgarly Received Notion of Nature
  Michael Hunter and Edward B. Davis (eds.) (Cambridge University Press, 1996)
• Robert Boyle: Scrupulosity and Science
  Michael Hunter (Boydell, 2000)
• The Excellencies of Robert Boyle
  J.J. MacIntosh (ed.) (Broadview Editions, 2008)
• The Secrets of Alchemy
  Lawrence M. Principe (University of Chicago Press, 2012) Google Books →
• The Aspiring Adept: Robert Boyle and His Alchemical Quest
  Lawrence M. Principe (Princeton University Press, 2000) Google Books →
• Alchemy Tried in the Fire: Starkey, Boyle and the Fate of Helmontian Chymistry
  Lawrence M. Principe and William R. Newman (Chicago University Press, 2002) Google Books →
• Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life
  Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer (Princeton University Press, 2011) Google Books →
• A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in 17th-Century England
  Steven Shapin (Chicago University Press, 1994)

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Programme ID: b0460p63

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0460p63

Auto-category: 540 (Chemistry)