Phosphorus Boyle

He developed other tests that could be used to detect the presence of certain elements, such as copper or iron (Boyle didn t know that copper and iron were elements, of course). After being shown samples of the newly discovered element, phosphorus, Boyle and his assistants discovered how to obtain it from urine, and he described the properties of phosphorus so extensively that two centuries passed before there was anything to add. 

Que Hee and Boyle [70] analysed soils for total phosphorus using Parr bomb digestion with hydrofluoric-nitric-perchloric acids followed by inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry. 

Boyle seems to have been fascinated with the new element, which he learned to prepare in both solid and liquid forms. (Phosphorus melts at a temperature only a few degrees above that of the human body and the melting point can be lowered by mixing it with other... 

It might seem that not much had been done to advance the science of chemistry. Although a new element had been discovered, it was not recognized as an element, and its main use was to exhibit it as a curiosity. The discovery of phosphorus had impoverished Brandt, while Kraft and Godfrey (ne Hanckwitz) became wealthy. Its discovery had done little but affect a few individual fives. However, the discovery of phosphorus was an important event. Boyle s experiments with the... 

When Krafft went to England, he exhibited phosphorus in the court of Charles II and showed it to the Honourable Robert Boyle (1, 4, 6, 23). The great British scientist then prepared it by a slightly different method and studied its properties more thoroughly than did any other chemist of the seventeenth century (I). 

Dr. Heimann Peters concluded from a study of these old letters diat Kunckel did not rediscover phosphorus, but merely made a litde of it by Brand s mediod, and that, even without Kunckel, phosphorus would have remained known to the world through the efforts of Krafft, Leibniz, and Boyle (I). 

In his article entitled The aerial noctiluca, Robert Boyle mentioned that die experienced chyniist Mr. Daniel Krafft had, in a visit that he purposely made me, shewn me and some of my friends, both his liquid and consistent phosphorus.. . . In return for some information about uncommon mercuries,. .. he [Krafft], in requital, confest to me at parting, that at least die principal matter of his phosphorus s was somewhat diat belonged to die body of man. .. (6, 19). On September 30, 1680, Boyle s efforts to prepare die luminous element were crowned with success, and two weeks later he deposited his recipe with the secretaries of the Royal Society, who, however, did not open it until after he had died in 1691 (7). 

Boyle s assistant, A. G. Hanckwitz or Hanckewitz (1660-1741), was therefore able to develop the piocess on a commercial scale, improve it, and export phosphorus to the continent (8,. 9, 17). Hanckwitz had been brought over from Germany at an early age by his honored master. He later built furnaces and stills in Maiden Lane, and traveled through the... 

Hanckwitz kept his recipe for phosphorus a profound secret, and, even in the article which he published in 1733, forty or fifty years after leaving Boyle s laboratory, gave only an obscure description of the process (8,10). The sons evidently adopted the same policy, for one of them wrote ... 

As to the phosphorus made of urine called Kunckel s, we have it described by the Honourable Mr. Boyle, Mons Hombeig, and others. But I shall beg to be excused foi not discovering the process how I prepare it, or from giving any farther light into its production than what was done by my father, before the Royal Society, in the year 1733 (16). 

Max Speter, 1883-1942. Transylvanian inventor and historian of chemistry Author of many articles on Boerhaave, Geoffroy the Elder, Marggraf, Black and Lavoisier. Contributor to Das Buch der grossen Chemiker. In 1929 he found the Boyle-Hanckwitz recipe for phosphorus, after it had been kept secret for more than two centuries (26). 

Boyle, R., A phosphorus, Phil Trans. Abridgment, 5th edition, 3, 353-4... 

Birth of Robert Boyle in Ireland. Independent discoverer of phosphorus. 

The process used by Kunckel and Boyle gives slight yield and phosphorous was an expensive product in their day. Only after Gahn or Scheele (about 1771) had shown that bones contain phosphoric acid, was discovered the process in which the syrupy liquid produced by removing a great part of the calcium by nitric or sulphuric acid is reduced by ignition with carbon. By this method phosphorus was obtained at a cost which removed it from the class of expensive rarities, and gave it wide industrial possibilities. 

According to G. W. Stahl, J. D. Kraft alleged that he communicated to R. Boyle the mode of preparing phosphorus during his visit to England, but this assertion is generally discredited. F. Hoefer summed up his opinion ... 

In the seventeenth century, Robert Boyle was much impressed by the fact that a body like phosphorus was able to shine in the dark without having been before illumined by any lucid substance, and without being hot as to sense and by the remarkably small amount of phosphorus required to produce a luminous effect. He said ... 

R. Boyle observed that the presence of a minute quantity of a number of essential oils—e.g. oil of mace or of aniseed—extinguished the glow of phosphorus. J. Davy, H. A. von Vogel, and T, Graham showed that the luminescence is not prevented when the vapour of sulphur, or of acetic acid, hydrogen chloride, or ammonia is present phosphorus is luminous in hydrogen chloride or carbon... 

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