Johann Jakob Scheuchzer

Johann Jakob Scheuchzer ( born August 2, 1672 Zurich, † June 23, 1733 in Zurich ) was a Swiss physician and naturalist, who was primarily known for his interpretation of fossils as a remnant of the flood ( deluge theory). Its official botanical author abbreviation is " JJScheuchzer ".

Life

Scheuchzer was born in 1672 the son of a Zurich city physician. His mother was a daughter of the Latin school principal whose school ( Collegium Humanitatis ) he attended. In addition, the father taught him in the natural sciences. However, in 1688 his father died early, and gave himself up Scheuchzer autodidactic studies. The Zurich orphanage physician Johann Jakob Wagner (1641-1695), author of Historia naturalis a first Helvetiae curiosa ( Zurich 1689), influenced him at this time very much.

His medical studies he graduated from in 1692 in Altdorf near Nuremberg, and from 1693 in Utrecht, where he received his doctorate in 1694. In the same year he undertook, inspired by August Quirinus Rivinus, the Rector of the University of Leipzig, his first research trip to the Alps. From 1695 he held the Collegium of the Kindly Ones ( 1694-1709 ), a confidential discussion circles Zurich intellectual, scholarly lectures.

Since Scheuchzer had to wait after completing his studies, until one of the four official doctors Zurich died in order to take the position can, he worked with in scientific societies and academies of the city. By the death of Johann Jakob Wagner in 1695 he got a job as a doctor, after all. At the same time he also took over the position of director of the Citizens Library and the Art and Natural History chamber in which he chose for the study of his home country. These explorations should then lead him to 1714 across the country.

With a large and detailed questionnaire with 220 questions, he was informed in advance with friends in the whole of Switzerland on the nature and the weather conditions in their hometowns; However, the turnout was not very high. Above all, a rising standard of popular education and to the refutation of folktales wrote Scheuchzer as a summary of his findings from 1705 to 1707 the Strange Natural histories of the Swiss - Lands weekly Erzehlung in which he refuted about the opinion that the storm stemmed at Pilatus by demons, once you the lake come closer or even throwing an object at him. He himself wrote in 1714 " I myself have in the presence of Sennen, which deride these fables, stone, wood and other thrown more than once in this puddle without danger and harm." Also at the National Education wrote in 1701 Scheuchzer the first physics book in German entitled Physica, or natural science.

Scientific achievements

Of particular importance are the scientific achievements Scheuchzers who performed first height measurements with barometric instruments instead of the much less reliable trigonometric calculations. He was with the Lucerne Stadtphysikus Moritz Anton Kappeler and his pupil Johann Heinrich Hottinger (1680-1756) one of the founders of modern crystallography, and due to its climatological observations, he was able to write regular weather reports through studies of rock crystals.

However, Johann Jakob Scheuchzer is best known for his paleontological work. In his Lithographia Helvetica he described the fossils still as " freaks of nature " or remnants of the flood. However, he was convinced of the ways of thinking of René Descartes, who represented a juxtaposition of divine omnipotence and the existence of laws of nature in God's work through the translation of the Book Essay toward a Natural History of the earth by John Woodward into Latin. Scheuchzer dealt intensively with the fossils, especially those of animals, and introduced in 1726 in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of him on a Schienerberg skeleton found than that of a drowned in the deluge people before ( "Homo diluvii testis "). With this interpretation of the fossil he was wrong, however, and it was several years later by the Frenchman Georges Cuvier ( 1769-1832 ), recognized as the skeleton of an extinct giant salamander Andrias and designated as scheuchzeri.

By 1709 published Herbarium diluvianum Johann Jakob Scheuchzer became the founder of paleobotany. In this work he shows on 14 panels plant imprints, which are derived mainly from the Carboniferous, Permian and Tertiary plants. These panels are made ​​so lifelike that based on the pictures in most pictures a species identification is possible. His extensive collection of fossils and minerals is now preserved in the Paleontological Museum of Zurich, but only a small part of it is exhibited.

1713 was a four-leaf map of Switzerland, the Nova Helvetiae tabula geographica, which was some time as the best and the valid map of Switzerland. Through his scientific work Johann Jakob Scheuchzer gained international recognition. Thus participated as the then president of the Royal Society in London, Isaac Newton, the pressure Scheuchzers first work Itinera alpina tria, and 1710 offered him the Russian Tsar Peter the Great on the recommendation of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, the well-paid position as personal physician to the Scheuchzer but refused.

In Switzerland itself, however Scheuchzer was shunned, mainly because of its novel ideas and interpretation of divine action. Particularly through the work Physica Sacra, or Sacred Natural Science (short copper - Bible ) he pissed away the sympathies of fellow countrymen. In this four-volume work should attempt to determine the existence of God through science. This so-called physico presented Bible stories through scientific explanations represents a permission to print the Bible copper Scheuchzer denied in Confederation. 1731-1735 the Physica sacra appeared, however, but, in Augsburg. With four folio volumes and 2098 pages and 750 engravings, it became a masterpiece of the art of printing at that time. Although Scheuchzer able to finish the manuscripts for the German and the Latin edition yet, through his death on June 23, 1733 he did not live, however, the completion. After the Latin and the German version followed a Dutch and a French version of the work.

Honors

The Scheuchzerhorn and Scheuchzerjoch in the Bernese Alps are named after Johann Jakob Scheuchzer. In the Zurich district Upper Rhinestone ( Kreis 6) the Scheuchzerstrasse was named after the explorer.

Carl Linnaeus named him and his brother John Scheuchzer (1684-1738) in honor of the genus Scheuchzeria the plant family of flowers Rushes ( Scheuchzeriaceae ).

Discount

In the Zurich Central Library is located Scheuchzers estate, which corresponds to 12.3 linear meters. Including letters, materials for work, filing, work, pictures and maps ( in the Map Collection ). In addition, protocols of the Collegium of the Kindly Ones (1694-1709), speeches, lectures and preparatory work.

Works

• Physica, or natural science, Zurich 1701
• Specimen lithografiae Helveticae, Zurich 1702
• Description of the nature stories of the Swiss countryside. Zurich 1706-1708 doi: 10.5962/bhl.title.65822
• Strange Natural histories of the Swiss - Lands weekly Erzehlung, Zurich 1707
• Piscium Querelae et Vindiciae, Zurich 1708 doi: 10.5962/bhl.title.9145
• Herbarium diluvianum, Zurich 1709
• Natural history of the country Schweitzer, Zurich 1716
• Jobi physica sacra, Or Job's natural WissenSchafftBilder, compared with those calculated the moderns, Zurich 1721
• Herbarium Diluvianum. 1723 doi: 10.5962/bhl.title.44483
• Homo diluvii testis, Zurich 1726
• Sceleton duorum humanorum petrefactorum pars, ex epistola ad H. Sloane, in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 34, 1728
• Physica Sacra, 4 volumes, Augsburg and Ulm 1731-35