Robert Boyle died in the early hours of Thursday, 31 December 1691, and, though it may be more important to commemorate the anniversaries of great men's births than their deaths, it seemed a pity to allow this occasion to go unmarked. In fact, the 350th anniversary of Boyle's birth in 1977 seems to have passed virtually unnoticed: as the Bibliography appended to this volume illustrates, one has to go back to the 250th anniversary of Boyle's death in 1941 to find much commemorative activity, apart from a flurry inspired by the tercentenary of the publication of his best-known book, The Sceptical Chymist, in 1961. Hence it seemed appropriate to hold a gathering to mark the tercentenary of the great scientist's death, quite apart from the opportunity thereby provided to capitalise on the research on his writings and milieu which has proliferated in recent years.

It would have been possible for this event to have taken place in Oxford — where Boyle lived from 1655 to 1668 — or in London, where he shared a house in Pall Mall with his sister, Lady Ranelagh, from 1668 until their deaths within eight days of each other in 1691. Instead, it seemed better to escape from such predictable venues, and the symposium was convened near Stalbridge in Dorset; here, Boyle spent ten highly significant years of his life between 1645 and 1655, living on the estate which he had inherited from his father, the Great Earl of Cork, who had acquired it in 1636.