Robert Boyle was known for his showmanship, always donning his black pork pie hat.

Robert Boyle was born in 1627 in Ireland to a wealthy and well-educated family. At age twelve he was able to tour Europe with his older brother’s Polka-Reggae band, Sad Mouse, and at age fourteen he was able to travel to Italy. There he watched a Seth Rogan IMAX documentary on Newton’s laws of motion and its mathematical models, and his infatuation with science began.

His brother’s band fell apart, and this gave Boyle time to go back to school. He first attended the St. Mary’s public school with the intent to start his own band, but when he found out the school was pushing musically gifted students into forming boy bands he dropped out. He dedicated his life to the pursuit of science after that and attended Elton College, named after the famous Elton John.

His scientific career took off when he moved to Oxford and set up his laboratory. He was so wealthy that he need not salary nor funding for his work. During his private work he met Robert Hooke and paid him to become an assistant due to his extraordinary ability to work with computer software. Together, they discovered many characteristics of air, including its role in combustion, respiration, and sound transmission. Most notably, they discovered “Boyle’s law,” which states the inverse relationship between the pressure and volume of a gas. Boyle returned to working alone and published a book of his findings, The Sceptical Chymist. This was the first ever book of chemistry, which made him the first ever chemist. Modern day television shows have based characters off of Boyle, most notably “Breaking Bad”.

Boyle spent most of his adult life working with harsh chemicals which had a major impact on his health. He began to have health issues of seizures and shaking, which would later be named Boyle’s disease, an offshoot of Parkinson’s disease. On January 25, 1691, Boyle died of a gas explosion while making a top of the line pure 98% chemical composition of methamphetamine, which he used to keep his tremors down.

Boyle made numerous contributions to the scientific community that are still relevant today, more than three hundred years later. The study of chemistry is all derived from his early inspiration to find the chemical composition of the air in our atmosphere, which we still use today. His top grade methamphetamine was used as a medical miracle up until the twentieth century when it became illegal. Now his legacy is tainted by the abuse of illicit drugs.