<P> This relationship between pressure and volume was first noted by Richard Towneley and Henry Power in the seventeenth century . Robert Boyle confirmed their discovery through experiments and published the results . According to Robert Gunther and other authorities , it was Boyle 's assistant , Robert Hooke , who built the experimental apparatus . Boyle 's law is based on experiments with air , which he considered to be a fluid of particles at rest in between small invisible springs . At that time , air was still seen as one of the four elements , but Boyle disagreed . Boyle 's interest was probably to understand air as an essential element of life ; for example , he published works on the growth of plants without air . Boyle used a closed J - shaped tube and after pouring mercury from one side he forced the air on the other side to contract under the pressure of mercury . After repeating the experiment several times and using different amounts of mercury he found that under controlled conditions , the pressure of a gas is inversely proportional to the volume occupied by it . The French physicist Edme Mariotte ( 1620 -- 1684 ) discovered the same law independent of Boyle in 1679 , but Boyle had already published it in 1662 . Mariotte did , however , discover that air volume changes with temperature . Thus this law is sometimes referred to as Mariotte 's law or the Boyle -- Mariotte law . Later , in 1687 in the Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica , Newton showed mathematically that if an elastic fluid consisting of particles at rest , between which are repulsive forces inversely proportional to their distance , the density would be directly proportional to the pressure , but this mathematical treatise is not the physical explanation for the observed relationship . Instead of a static theory a kinetic theory is needed , which was provided two centuries later by Maxwell and Boltzmann . </P>
<P> This relationship between pressure and volume was first noted by Richard Towneley and Henry Power in the seventeenth century . Robert Boyle confirmed their discovery through experiments and published the results . According to Robert Gunther and other authorities , it was Boyle 's assistant , Robert Hooke , who built the experimental apparatus . Boyle 's law is based on experiments with air , which he considered to be a fluid of particles at rest in between small invisible springs . At that time , air was still seen as one of the four elements , but Boyle disagreed . Boyle 's interest was probably to understand air as an essential element of life ; for example , he published works on the growth of plants without air . Boyle used a closed J - shaped tube and after pouring mercury from one side he forced the air on the other side to contract under the pressure of mercury . After repeating the experiment several times and using different amounts of mercury he found that under controlled conditions , the pressure of a gas is inversely proportional to the volume occupied by it . The French physicist Edme Mariotte ( 1620 -- 1684 ) discovered the same law independent of Boyle in 1679 , but Boyle had already published it in 1662 . Mariotte did , however , discover that air volume changes with temperature . Thus this law is sometimes referred to as Mariotte 's law or the Boyle -- Mariotte law . Later , in 1687 in the Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica , Newton showed mathematically that if an elastic fluid consisting of particles at rest , between which are repulsive forces inversely proportional to their distance , the density would be directly proportional to the pressure , but this mathematical treatise is not the physical explanation for the observed relationship . Instead of a static theory a kinetic theory is needed , which was provided two centuries later by Maxwell and Boltzmann . </P>
who created a law describing how the pressure and volume of a gas are related
who created a law describing how the pressure and volume of a gas are related
Robert Boyle
Robert Boyle