 Robert Boyle was born in Lismore, Ireland, on January 25,   1627.[6] He was his parents’ fourteenth, penultimate, child, and the last to survive to adulthood. Boyle was the youngest son and, after his sister Margaret died when he was 10, the youngest child of the family. Boyle speaks fondly of his parents, but he could not have known them well.  His mother died in childbirth a few weeks after Boyle’s third birthday, and he last saw his father just before he and his brother Francis left for a continental tour when Boyle was twelve.