Johannes Marcus Marci
Johannes Marcus Marci de Cronland (born June 13, 1595 in Landskron , Kingdom of Bohemia , † April 10, 1667 in Prague ) was a doctor and scientist.
Life
Born in 1595 in Landskron in Bohemia as the son of an estate manager, Johannes Marcus Marci attended the Jesuit school in Neuhaus from 1608 . Since he aspired to a career as a priest , he took up a degree in philosophy and theology in Olomouc . In 1618 he broke off his training and from then on devoted himself to studying human medicine , which he completed at Charles University in Prague .
From 1626 Marci was a practicing doctor . He later became a professor at Charles University, then dean and rector of the medical faculty .
In 1638 he met the Jesuit and scholar Athanasius Kircher , with whom he should have a long friendship. Kircher introduced him to the (then) knowledge of the oriental scripts, especially the Arabic ones .
When Prague was besieged by the Swedish military in 1648, Marci commanded a student military unit that he had set up himself. For his services in the field he was raised to the nobility in 1654 . From then on he was allowed to call himself Johannes Marcus Marci de Cronland .
Marci was also the personal physician of the Habsburg Emperor Ferdinand III. and Leopold I.
As a scientist, Marci conducted research in the fields of medicine , mechanics , optics and, subordinate to that, mathematics :
- In the publication De proportione motus (1639), even before Isaac Newton , he described his theory of the collision of bodies.
- He published his findings in optics in Thaumantias liber de arcu caelesti (1648) and Dissertatio de natura iridis (1650). There, more than 50 years before Newton's Opticks, he describes his “Experimentum crucis” and the division of white light into colors of different degrees of refraction. He also anticipates Huygens' principle of elementary waves . Thaumantias was known to both Huygens and the Royal Society .
- In his medical work, Marci dealt 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 particularly to topics that now fall under neurology and physiology . This included the investigation of the origin of epileptic seizures .
At times he was in possession of the Voynich manuscript .
Trivia
The lunar crater Marci is named after him.
literature
- Carl von Prantl : Marci, Johannes Marcus, called von Kronland . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 20, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1884, p. 301 f.
- Ivo Schneider : Marci von Kronland, Johann Marcus. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 16, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-428-00197-4 , p. 119 f. ( Digitized version ).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Compare Szabo: History of Mechanical Principles , Birkhäuser 1979.
- ↑ Edmund Hoppe: History of Optics , Wiesbaden, 1927 (1967)
- ↑ Isis, Vol. 60, No. 2 (Summer, 1969), pp. 244-246. Page not available , search in web archives: .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Marci, Johannes Marcus |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Johannes Marcus Marci de Cronland |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Physicians and natural scientists |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 13, 1595 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Landskron , Kingdom of Bohemia |
| DATE OF DEATH | April 10, 1667 |
| Place of death | Prague |