Athanasius Kircher
Athanasius Kircher (sometimes spelt Kirchner) (May 2 1601–27 November 1680) was a 17th century German Jesuit and scholar who published 44 works, most notably in the fields of oriental languages, geography and medicine. His work on Egyptian hieroglyphics anticipated the decisive work of Champollion, while he was ahead of his time in proposing that the plague was caused by an infectious microorganism and in suggesting effective measures to prevent the spread of the disease.
Life
He was born on May 2 1601 in Geisa, Buchonia, near Fulda. From his birthplace he took the epithets Bucho, Buchonius and Fuldensis which he sometimes added to his name. He attended the Jesuit College in Fulda from 1614 to 1618, when he joined the order himself. He studied philosophy and theology at Paderborn, Münster, Cologne and Mainz, then joined the priesthood in 1628 and becoming professor of ethics and mathematics at the University of Würzburg, where he also taught Hebrew and Syrian. From 1628 he began to be interested in Egyptian hieroglyphics. In 1631 he was driven by war to the papal University of Avignon in France. He was called to Vienna by the emperor, but on the intervention of Sicolas Peiresc he was sent instead to Rome to continue with his scholarly work. He arrived in Rome in 1633 following a shipwreck on his way to Vienna before he knew of the decision. He based himself in the city for the rest of his life, and from 1638 taught mathematics, physics and oriental languages at the Collegio Romano for six years before being released to devote himself to research. In Rome he studied first malaria and then the plague, and amassed a collection of antiquities which formed the nucleus of the Museum Kircherianum.
Works
Kircher published a large number of substantial books on a very wide variety of subjects, such as Egyptology, geology, and music theory. Kircher's greatest work is Oedipus Aegyptiacus (1652-54) a vast study of Egyptology and comparative religion. He was not always critical, and he had a tendency to fill the holes in his knowledge with mere speculations. Nevertheless, his works, written in Latin, had a wide circulation in the 17th century, and they contributed to the dissemination of scientific information to a wider circle of readers. Many of Kircher's ideas were displayed on the exhibit "The World is Bound with Secret Knots" at the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles.
Kirchner was a recipient of the Voynich Manuscripts in 1665, sent to him by Johannes Marcus Marci in the hope of being able to decipher them. The manuscripts remained in the Collegio Romano until Victor Emmanuel II of Italy annexed the papal states in 1870.
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