Inscriptions: Boyle & Hooke
This plaque is on the wall of University College. It reads:
In a house on this site
between 1655 and 1668 lived
ROBERT BOYLE
Here he discovered BOYLE'S LAW
and made experiments with an
AIR PUMP designed by his assistant
ROBERT HOOKE
Inventor Scientist and Architect
who made a MICROSCOPE
and thereby first identified
the LIVING CELL
The apothecary Robert Boyle (1627–1691) lived here in a house with its own physic garden, known as Deep Hall, from 1665 to 1688. A famous painting of the High by J. M. W. Turner shows his house being demolished in about 1810.
A second seventeenth-century apothecary's house with a physic garden stood nearby, and both were used for meetings of the Oxford Scientific Society.
The part of University College on the site of the two apothecaries' houses now contains the Shelley Memorial.