REVIEWS:
"In recent years nobody has done more than Michael Hunter to enhance and extend our knowledge and understanding of Boyle's life and work. Here, he presents the reader with a superb finely textured and insightful survey of Boyle and his historical context which, firmly based on his own unsurpassed expertise, remains accessible and always fascinating."
- John Henry, author of The Scientific Revolution and the Origins of Modern Science

DESCRIPTION:
Robert Boyle ranks with Newton and Einstein as one of the world's most important scientists. Aristocrat and natural philosopher, he was a remarkably wide-ranging and penetrating thinker - pioneering the modern experimental method, championing a novel mechanical view of nature, and reflecting deeply on philosophical and theological issues related to science. But, as Michael Hunter shows, Boyle was also a complex and contradictory personality, fascinated by alchemy and magic and privately plagued with doubts about faith and conscience, which troubled the rational vision he heralded. This extraordinary work is the first biography of Boyle in a generation, and the culminating achievement of a world-renowned expert on the scientist. Deftly navigating Boyle's voluminous published works as well as his personal letters and papers, Hunter's complete and intimate account gives us the man rather than the myth, the troubled introvert as well as the public campaigner. Lively, perceptive, and full of original insights, this is the definitive account of a remarkable man and the changing world in which he lived.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY:
Read more about Michael Hunter. Michael Cyril William Hunter (born 1949) is Professor of History at Birkbeck, University of London, specializing in the history of science in seventeenth-century England, particularly the work of Robert Boyle.

SUBJECT CLASSIFICATIONS:
Biography & autobiography: science, technology & engineering
History of science

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:
Illustrations: Illustrations
Number of Pages: 400
Dewey: 509.2