It is because of the publication of Boyle's book that chemistry got rid of the subordinate position of metallurgy or medicine, which marked the beginning of modern chemistry and made chemistry an independent science specializing in exploring nature. As later critics said, if Galileo's dialogue is regarded as the beginning of classical physics, then Boyle's skeptical chemist can be regarded as the beginning of modern chemistry.
Robert boyle was born in Leedsmobile, southwest Ireland, on June 25th, 1627. His father was the Earl of Cork, the capital of Ireland, and he was also the richest man. Robert is the youngest of 0/4 children in his family. He was sickly since he was a child. He liked quiet and reading, but he stuttered a little. So his father loves him dearly and specially invited the best tutor for him.
164 1 year, accompanied by his mentor, Boyle traveled around Europe with his brother. In the meantime, he came into contact with Galileo's classic book "Dialogue between Two World Systems", which was deeply inspired and laid the foundation for his future masterpiece "Skeptical Chemist".
Putting forward the concept of scientific elements is Boyle's outstanding achievement in chemistry. He redefined the concept of "element" and denied the theory of four elements and three elements, which made chemistry clear its research object for the first time.
The concept of "element" was first put forward by Plato, an ancient Greek philosopher. Later, his student Aristotle further clearly formed the theory of four elements, that is, the source of everything consists of four elements: fire, water, air and earth. For two thousand years, this theory has been regarded as truth by many people. Later, medical chemists put forward the theory of sulfur, mercury and salt, which was once all the rage.
Boyle found through a series of experiments that traditional elements are not real elements, and taking gold without these "elements" as an example, it is impossible to separate any elements such as sulfur, mercury and salt from gold. On the contrary, the salt in these traditional elements can be decomposed. Based on these findings, Boyle thinks that elements are simple materials that cannot be decomposed by chemical methods. He further realized that as the source of all things, there are not only "four kinds" as Aristotle said, but also three kinds as medical chemists said, but many kinds. From a modern point of view, Boyle's concept of elements is essentially similar to that of simple materials. The scientific definition of modern elements is the general name of the same kind of atoms with the same nuclear charge number. This scientific understanding has been more than 300 years since Boyle.
Boyle paid special attention to the idea of scientific experiments, and repeatedly stressed: "In order to accomplish its glorious and solemn mission, chemistry must abandon the ancient traditional speculative methods and base itself on rigorous experiments like physics." He brought these new ideas into the field of chemistry, paving the way for the healthy development of chemistry.
In addition, Boyle has several indelible chemical achievements. For example, the acid-base indicator commonly used in chemical experiments was discovered because of his careful observation. In a nervous experiment of Boyle, violets in the laboratory were splashed with concentrated hydrochloric acid. Boyle quickly washed the smoking violets with water and found that the purple violets turned red.
This strange phenomenon prompted him to carry out many experiments on the interaction between flowers and trees and acid and alkali. From this, he found that most flowers and plants can change color under the action of acid or alkali, among which the purple extract of litmus is the most obvious. It turns red in acid and blue in alkali. Using this characteristic, Boyle made litmus test paper commonly used in experiments.
Boyle spent his last years in a hospital bed. Nevertheless, he persisted in experiments and made outstanding achievements in preparing phosphorus and studying phosphorus and phosphide, forming the earliest introduction about the properties of phosphorus at that time. Boyle died in169165438+February 3 1. The greatest pleasure in his life is doing experiments or writing papers.