Robert Boyle

Born in 1627 to Anglo-Irish wealth, Boyle came of age when alchemy still ruled the bench. He brought the experimental method to chemistry: isolating variables, repeating trials, trusting only what the apparatus showed. In 1662 he formalized the law that bears his name — pressure and volume of a gas move in inverse proportion at constant temperature — a relationship you could predict and test. His book "The Sceptical Chymist" dismantled the old elemental dogmas and laid groundwork for the field as we know it. A devout Anglican, he wrote theology alongside his science, died in 1691, and left che…