BOERHAAVE calls Robert Boyle “the ornament of his age and country,” the successor of Bacon, and a philosopher “to whom we owe the secrets of fire, air, water, animals, vegetables, fossils.” Although his fame as a scientist has long been eclipsed by the work of those who owed their ability to succeed largely to his efforts as a pioneer in chemistry and physics, he had a genius, well illustrated in his contemplations of “A Glow Worm in a Phial” which would not allow him to be forgotten even if he could cease to be remembered as the discoverer of Boyle’s Law of the Elasticity of Air. He was the seventh son of the Earl of Cork. Born at Lismore Castle, Ireland, January 25th, 1627, he inherited from his father the manor of Stalbridge, where he spent much of his time in close retirement, devoted to scientific studies and experiments. He was one of the founders of the Royal Society, and in 1680 was chosen its president. Between 1654 and 1668 he lived at Oxford, and while there improved the air pump. One of his scientific essays excited Swift’s bitter humor, and, it is said, gave him his first suggestion of “Gulliver’s Travels.” Boyle died December 30th, 1691. Among his numerous works are “Tracts about the Cosmical Qualities of Things,” 1670; “Essays on the Origin and Virtue of Gems,” 1672; “Essays on the Strange Subtlety, etc., of Effluvia,” 1673; “The Excellence of Theology,” 1673; “The Saltness of the Sea, etc.,” 1674; “Some Considerations about the Reconcilableness of Reason and Religion,” 1675; “Experiments about the Mechanical Origin or Production of Particular Qualities,” 1676; “Historical Account of a Degradation of Gold by an Anti-Elixir,” 1678; “Discourse of Things above Reason,” 1681; “Memoirs on the Natural History of Human Blood,” 1684; “Essay in the Great Effects of Even, Languid, and Unheeded Motion,” 1690; “Of the High Veneration Man’s Intellect Owes to God,” 1690; “The Christian Virtuoso,” 1690; and “Free Inquiry into the Vulgarly Received Notion of Nature,” 1691.