=Robert Boyle=, fourteenth child and the seventh and youngest son of Richard the “Great” Earl of Cork, and Lord High Chancellor of Ireland, was born at Lismore in 1626. He was educated at Eton under Sir Henry Wotton, and, after spending some years on the Continent, settled at Stalbridge in Dorset, where he owned a manor. He became a member of what was known as the Invisible College, a small association of men interested in the new philosophy, who met at each other’s houses in London, and occasionally at Gresham College, “to discourse and consider of philosophical inquiries and such as related thereunto.” The meetings were subsequently held in Oxford, and Boyle took up his residence there in 1654. Here—in association with Wilkins; John Wallis and Seth Ward, the two Savilian Professors of Geometry and Astronomy; Thomas Willis, the physician, then student of Christ Church; Christopher Wren, then Fellow of All Souls’ College; Goddard, Warden of Merton; and Ralph Bathurst, Fellow of Trinity, and afterwards its President—they sought to cultivate the new philosophy, “being satisfied that there was no certain way of arriving at any competent knowledge unless they made a variety of experiments upon natural bodies. In order to discover what phenomena they would produce, they pursued that method by themselves with great industry, and then communicated their discoveries to each other.” The Invisible College eventually grew into the Royal Society, which received its charter in 1663. Boyle removed to London in 1668, and died there on December 31st, 1691, in the sixty-fifth year of his age.