Jan Marek Marci
Johannes Marcus Marci de Cronland ( born June 13, 1595 Landskron, Bohemia, † April 10, 1667 in Prague) was a physician, philosopher and scientist.
Life
Born in Crown land, today Lanškroun, in Bohemia, the son of an estate manager in 1595 John Marek Marci attended from 1608 the Jesuit school in Neuhaus. As he sought a career as a priest, Marci studied philosophy and theology in Olomouc. In 1618, he dropped out of education, and devoted himself successfully to the study of medicine at the Charles University in Prague.
From 1626 Marci was a practicing physician. Later he became a professor at the Charles University, in succession dean and rector of the medical faculty.
1638 Marci met the Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher, with whom he entertained a long friendship. Kircher led him into the (then) knowledge of the oriental scriptures, particularly the Arab, a.
As Prague was besieged in 1648 by the Swedish military, Marci commanded a student military unit, which he himself had established. For his achievements in the field, he was raised to the peerage in 1654.
Professional and research
Marci already been very successful as a physician and personal physician to the Habsburg Emperor Ferdinand III. and his successor, Leopold I.
As a scientist Marci conducted research in the fields of medicine, mechanics, optics and subordinate to mathematics:
- In the publication De proportione motus ( 1639 ) he described, even before Isaac Newton, his theory of the collision of bodies.
- His discoveries in optics, he published in Thaumantias liber de arcu caelesti ( 1648) and Dissertatio de natura iridis (1650). There he describes more than 50 years before Newton's Opticks whose " Experimentum crucis " and the division of white light into colors of different refrangibility. He also takes the Huygens principle of elementary waves anticipated. Thaumantias was known both Huygens and in the Royal Society.
- In his medical works, Marci worked with both philosophical and theological problems. As a follower of the school of Paracelsus, he renewed the idea that an organic body arises from a seed.
- Marci devoted himself especially topics that today fall under neurology and physiology. Among them were the investigation of the origin of epileptic seizures.