Who discovered the Ideal Gas Law?

Question

I know what the law is, I was just wondering who was the one who discovered it.

Answer 1

Nobody, actually. The Ideal Gas Law is a summation of three separately discovered laws by three different chemists:

- Boyle's Law is named after Robert Boyle who published it in 1662.
- Gay-Lussac's Law is named after Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac, who discovered it in 1809.
- Charles' Law was discoverd by Jacques Charles in 1787, but he never published it. Instead, it was referenced and published by Gay-Lussac in 1802 as he was doing other work.

Perhaps the reason why no specific scientist is given credit for the combined Ideal Gas Law is that so many were working on it at the same time. It's been pointed out that Avogadro might have had a version of it, and that almost anyone could have derived it mathematically if they just sat down and did the right kind of problem.

Answer 2

Boyle's law (sometimes known as the Boyle Mariotte law) is one of the gas laws. Boyle's Law is named after the Irish natural philosopher Robert Boyle (Lismore, County Waterford,1627-1691) who was the first to publish it in 1662. The relationship was brought to the attention of Boyle by two friends and amateur scientists, Richard Towneley and Henry Power, who discovered it. Boyle confirmed their discovery through experiments and published the results. According to Robert Gunther and other authorities Boyle's assistant Robert Hooke, who built the experimental apparatus, may well have helped to quantify the law; Hooke was accounted a more able mathematician than Boyle. Hooke also developed the improved vacuum pumps necessary for the experiments. The French physicist Edme Mariotte (1620-1684) discovered the same law independently of Boyle in 1676, so this law may be referred to as Mariotte's or the Mariotte Boyle law.

Boyle's Law states that the product of the volume and pressure of a fixed quantity of an ideal gas is constant, given constant temperature. Expressed mathematically, the formula for Boyle's law is:

where:

V is volume of the gas.
p is the pressure of the gas.
k is a constant (see Note 1).
The value of k is computed from measurements of volume and pressure for a fixed quantity of gas. After making a change to the system, typically by forcing a change in the volume of the vessel containing the fixed quantity of gas, the new volume and new pressure are measured. The result of computing the product of the measured new volume and the new pressure should be the original value of the constant k. Without being too rigorous at this point, the equation says that, after forcing the volume V of the fixed quantity of gas to increase, keeping the gas at the initially measured temperature, the pressure p must decrease proportionally. Conversely, decreasing the volume of the gas increases the pressure.

Boyle's law is commonly used to predict the result of introducing a standard, in volume and pressure only, to the initial state of a fixed quantity of gas. The "before" (subscript 1) and "after" (subscript 2) people and pressures of the fixed amount of water, where the "before" and "after" temperatures are the same (heating or cooling will be required to meet this condition), are related by the equation:

In practice, this equation is solved for one of the two "after" quantities to determine the effect that a change in the other "after" quantity will have. For example:

Boyle's law, Charles's Law, and Gay-Lussac's Law form the combined gas law. The three gas laws in combination with Avogadro's Law can be generalized by the ideal gas law.

Note 1. As long as the constant temperature constraint and the fixed quantity of gas constraint, both explicitly included in the statement of Boyle's law, are not violated, k will be constant

Answer 3

The equation PV=nRT commonly referred to as the ideal gas law is merely a combination of 4 different laws discovered by 4 different people at different times:
1)Boyle's law (1662): "PV=k" by Robert Boyle
2)Charles' law (1787-1802): "V/T=k" by Jacques Charles
3)Gay-Lussac's law (1809): "P/T=k" by Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac
and
4)Avogadro's law (1811): "V/n=a" by Amedeo Avogadro

Answer 4

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