George Starkey

The Harvard-educated alchemist who tutored Boyle, ghost-wrote the texts Newton studied hardest, and died treating plague victims.

Starkey emigrated from Bermuda-via-Harvard to London in 1650 and became the most credible practicing alchemist in the Royal Society's orbit. He performed real metallurgical analyses, isolated volatile salts, and taught hands-on chemistry to Robert Boyle. Under the pseudonym Eirenaeus Philalethes ("Peaceful Lover of Truth") he produced the alchemical treatises Newton would later annotate more heavily than any other source. He died in the Great Plague of 1665 while treating the sick. The lab work and mentorship reshaped early chemistry. The Philalethes program — a real, replicable transmutation — did not pan out, but it gave Newton 30 years of homework.