medicine & science
Pierre Chirac was a French physician and chief physician to Louis XV.
Chirac received his Doctor of Medicine degree from Montpellier in 1683, and three years later became professor of medicine. He was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences in 1716, became head of the Royal Garden of Medicinal Plants in 1718, and was appointed physician to Louis XV in 1731. In the 1690s Chirac selflessly and successfully engaged in the treatment of rampant at that time dysentery, yellow fever, smallpox.
Pierre Chirac was one of the leading physicians of his time; with an inquisitive mind, he was interested in several fields of medicine. In 1692, he wrote a significant treatise on cardiology.
Nicolas Chuquet was a 15th century French mathematician.
The exact dates of birth and death of this scientist are not known, nor are the places of birth. Chuquet received a Bachelor of Medicine degree from the University of Paris, went to Italy in the early 1470s, and around 1480 moved to Lyon, where he worked as a physician, mathematics teacher, and scribe. He is also known to have translated Latin works into French.
In 1484 he wrote his major algebraic work, the treatise Le Triparty en la Science des Nombres (The Science of Numbers in Three Parts), now considered one of the most original mathematical texts of the 15th century. At the time, arithmeticians lacked even the most basic notations for addition subtraction, multiplication, and division. Chuquet was one of the first to propose these symbols; he also introduced the names of large numbers into common use: billion, trillion, etc. In addition to general arithmetic and rules for calculating roots, the treatise contains a doctrine of equations and a collection of problems.
This treatise was published only in 1880, but the works of Nicolas Chuquet had a significant influence on the development of algebra, and they were consistently supplemented and expanded by scientists of the following generations.
Otto Brunfels (also Brunsfels, Braunfels) was a German theologian, botanist and physician.
After studying theology and philosophy at the University of Mainz, Brunfels went to a Cartesian monastery near Strasbourg and later became interested in botany there. 1524 he opened a school in Strasbourg. In 1530, Brunfels began studying medicine at the University of Basel and two years later became city physician in Bern, where he remained for the rest of his life.
In addition to theological works, Brunfels published works on education, Arabic, pharmacy, and botany. His Herbarium Vivae Icones (1530 and 1536) and Contrafayt Kreüterbuch (1532-1537) contain woodcuts of German plants with their German common names. The 135 original woodcuts are detailed, accurate, and realistic depictions of living plants by the German artist and engraver Hans Weiditz. Brunfels' work contributed to the shift away from medieval outdated herbalism to the establishment of botany as a modern science. Carl Linnaeus considered Brunfels one of the founders of modern botany.
Johann Zahn (German: Johann or Johannes Zahn) was a German scientist and philosopher, optician and astronomer, mathematician and inventor.
Zahn studied mathematics and physics at the University of Würzburg, was professor of mathematics at the University of Würzburg, and served as a canon of the Order of Regular Canon Premonstratensians. His other activities were optics as well as astronomical observations.
In 1686 Johann Zahn invented and designed a portable camera obscura with fixed lenses and an adjustable mirror, which is the prototype of the camera. In his treatise on optics, Oculus Artificialis Teledioptricus (1702), Zahn gives a complete picture of the state of optical science of his time. He begins with basic information about the eye and then moves on to optical instruments. The book is aimed at eighteenth-century microscope and telescope enthusiasts and includes all the necessary details of construction, from lens grinding to drawings.
Levinus Lemnius (Dutch: Lieven Lemse, Lenneus, Lennius, Lemmens, Lemnii of Lemnes) was a Dutch physician, philosopher, botanist and writer.
He studied under the famous Swiss botanist and bibliographer Conrad Gesner at the University of Louvain and under the famous Flemish anatomist Andreas Vesalius at the University of Padua. Lemnius's book On the Habit and Constitution of the Body was translated by Thomas Newton, an Anglican clergyman who translated some of Lemnius's treatises into English, as well as other modern continental and classical works.
Lemnius is considered the first author to describe the plants mentioned in the Bible, in T. Newton's translation, Herbal for the Bible (1587). Levin Lemnius's most famous book is Occulta naturae miracula (1559), a book of mysteries that was reprinted many times over a period of four hundred years.
Fortunio Liceti (Latin: Fortunius Licetus) was an Italian physician, natural philosopher, writer and educator.
Liceti studied philosophy and medicine at the University of Bologna and earned doctorates in these disciplines. He taught logic and philosophy at the University of Pisa, and became professor of philosophy at the University of Padua and the University of Bologna. At the University of Padua, Liceti became friends with Galileo Galilei.
Liceti's inquisitive mind was interested in a wide range of subjects: from genetics and reproduction to gems and animals. In general, Fortunio Liceti was a very industrious and prolific scientist: he published a book each year, writing more than seventy works on a wide range of subjects, including the human soul, reproduction, and birth defects.
In 1616, Liceti wrote and published the first edition of De monstruorum causis, natura et differentiis (On the Causes, Nature, and Differences of Monsters), a chronologically ordered catalog of monsters from antiquity to the seventeenth century. Among these monsters were infants with congenital malformations. Liceti was one of the first scholars to attempt to systematically categorize birth defects according to their causes, including numerous causes not related to the supernatural. This topic interested the scientist greatly and he returned to it several times during his life, supplementing it with illustrations, among other things. From 1640 to 1650. Liceti also wrote and published seven different volumes in which he answered questions from famous people on a wide variety of medical topics.
Johann Friedrich Meckel the Younger was a German anatomist, biologist and professor of anatomy.
Meckel came from a family of physicians; his grandfather and father were physicians and anatomists and had their own anatomical museum at home. Meckel studied medicine at the universities of Halle and Göttingen, writing his doctoral dissertation on congenital anomalies of the heart. As a pathologist, he specialized in the study of congenital malformations and aspects of lung and blood vessel development. He also described Meckel's diverticulum, which he discovered during a pathologic examination, and became the founder of the science of teratology.
After Napoleon's occupation, the University of Halle reopened in May 1808, and Meckel was appointed professor of surgery, normal and pathological anatomy, and obstetrics. He taught throughout his life, continued to conduct research in pathology, and collected specimens for his collection. The scientist was the author of numerous articles and several multi-volume treatises, including one on pathologic anatomy and an atlas depicting human anomalies. His principal labors were devoted to the comparative morphology of vertebrates. In 1810 he completed the translation of Cuvier's (1769-1832) five-volume Leçons d'anatomie Comparée from French into German.
Meckel was a member of the German Academy of Naturalists "Leopoldina," a corresponding member of the Paris Academy of Sciences, and a foreign member of the Royal Society of London.
Samuel Thomas von Soemmering was a German physician, anatomist, anthropologist, paleontologist, physiologist and inventor.
He studied medicine at Göttingen, where he received his doctorate, and in the same year became professor of anatomy at Kassel, then at Mainz. Among Soemmering's contributions to biology are the discovery of the macula in the retina of the human eye, studies of the brain, lungs, nervous system, and embryonic malformations, and he published many papers in the fields of neuroanatomy, anthropology, and paleontology. He was the first to give a reasonably accurate account of the structure of the female skeleton.
Soemmering also worked on fossil crocodiles and pterodactyls, which at the time were called ornithocephalians. In addition, Soemmering dabbled in chemistry, astronomy, philosophy, and various other fields of science. Among other things, he investigated the refinement of wines and sunspots, and designed a telescope for astronomical observations. In 1809, Soemmering developed a sophisticated telegraph system based on electrochemical current, which is now preserved in the German Science Museum in Munich.
