Konrad Gessner

The Swiss naturalist Konrad von Gesner (1516-1565) wrote "Historia animalium," which is considered the basis of modern zoology.

Konrad von Gesner was born on March 26, 1516, in Zurich. The man who was to become known as the German Pliny and to be ennobled by the Hapsburg emperor Ferdinand I began his life inauspiciously. His father, a poor furrier, perished in the battle of Kappel in 1531, as the wars spawned by the Reformation laid bloody hands on the Swiss cantons.

Young Gesner came under the protection of Heinrich Bullinger, Huldreich Zwingli's successor, and Oswald Myconius, the Protestant classics scholar. Their generosity permitted Gesner to undertake studies at the University of Strassburg, where he displayed great linguistic talent and interest in nature. Although he angered his guardians by marrying a beautiful but impoverished lady, Gesner was allowed to continue his studies at Basel, where he also studied medicine.

Gesner secured the professorship in Greek at Lausanne in 1537 and speedily compiled a dictionary in that language. The city physician of Zurich prevailed upon the young scholar to resume his medical studies so after wandering across France, Gesner settled down at the medical school of Montpellier and became a doctor of medicine. For his degree he successfully defended an anti-Aristotelian thesis on the nature of sensation.

Sometime after 1540 Gesner began teaching Aristotelian physics at the Collegium Carolinium. In his spare time he composed his Bibliotheca universalis, a vast encyclopedia in which he listed alphabetically all of the authors who had written in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, with a listing of all their books printed up to that time. This work made Gesner famous, and offers of scholarly employment poured in, including one from the Fuggers, the richest family of Europe. The Fuggers, however, attached the condition that Gesner embrace Catholicism, which he refused. He spent the rest of his life as a practicing physician at Zurich, leaving only for short expeditions to study flora and fauna.

In 1551 Gesner began work on the most comprehensive survey of nature undertaken during the Renaissance epoch, his monumental Historia animalium, an illustrated encyclopedia of the entire domain of living creatures: birds, fish, and animals. The work was an improvement of earlier European efforts of this kind but reflected the transitional nature of Renaissance scientific thought. Though including descriptions of creatures from remote America, Asia, Russia, and Africa, Gesner also described a host of mythical beasts. Although he had used such taxonomic devices as "genus, species" and "class, order" in his description of plants, Gesner showed little advance over Aristotle in discerning a pattern of biological order, a task to be delayed for almost 2 centuries. His book was beautifully illustrated by artists of the time and included drawings by Albrecht Dürer.

In 1555 Gesner wrote a tome on his first love, languages, entitled Mithridates. In 1564 the emperor Ferdinand conferred the title of nobility on Gesner, who designed his coat of arms to portray the books he had written and those that he still planned, including one on nine classical authors and one on gems. In 1565 the plague, which has been identified from Gesner's description as a form of pulmonary bubonic, came to Zurich, and on December 13 he died. A true child of his turbulent times, Gesner was still enthralled by a semireligious vision of nature, a vision composed of an unstable mixture of Aristotle, Scripture, and a passionate desire to explore and observe nature directly and personally.

Further Reading

There is no biography of Gesner in English. Useful studies are Henry Morley, Clement Morot and Other Studies (2 vols., 1871; repr. 1970); Frank Dawson Adams, Birth and Development of the Geological Sciences (1938); and George Sarton, Six Wings: Men of Science in the Renaissance (1957).

Additional Sources

Braun, Lucien, Conrad Gessner, Geneve: Editions Slatkine, 1990.

Gesner, Konrad (Zurich, 1516-65, Zurich), a polymath, who was a professor at Zurich University, compiled a catalogue of writers in the ancient tongues (Bibliotheca universalis, seu catalogus omnium scriptorum locupletissimus in tribus linguis, Graeca, Latina et Hebraica exstantium, 1545-9). He edited classical texts and translated Greek works into Latin. Gesner was an important pioneer in scientific development, and is sometimes styled the German Pliny (der deutsche Plinius). His work Historia animalium (1551-8) is the most important zoological treatise of its time, and his botanical writings (not published in his lifetime, Opera botanica, 1753-9) contain evidence of first-hand observation. De omni rerum fossilium genere, gemmis, lapidibus, metallis (1555) has original illustrations ofpetrifacts and crystals. His Mithridates (1555) is a notable early example of the comparative study of languages.

Gessner, Konrad (also Conrad Gesner, 1516–1565), polymath, philologist, theologian, naturalist, and town physician of Zurich from 1554. Gessner was born in 1516 into a family originally from Nuremberg. His father, Urs, was a furrier from Solothurn, Switzerland, who moved to Zurich, becoming a citizen there in 1511. Konrad's mother was Agathe Fritz (or Frick). He received a humanistic education at the Fraumünster School, and attended the Carolinum for theology. He was then tutored by Johann Jacob Ammann (1500–1573), a friend of Desiderius Erasmus (1466?–1536), and became a protégé of Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531) shortly before the reformer's death in the Battle of Kappel (1531).

Patronage allowed him to study Hebrew and give Greek lessons in Strasbourg in 1532. Thanks to Zwingli's successor, Heinrich Bullinger (1504–1575), and later to Johannes Steiger (1518–1581) of Berne, Gessner was able to travel to Basel and Paris, where he read Latin and Greek literature, rhetoric, and natural and moral philosophy. In 1534, because of persecution of Protestants, he left Paris for Strasbourg and Zurich, where he made an unhappy marriage to Barbara Singerin in 1536, and was obliged to teach elementary school. Further patronage enabled him to study medicine in Basel.

On the basis of his Lexicon Graecolatinum (1539; Greek-Latin dictionary), he was appointed professor of Greek at the Academy of Lausanne, where he also continued his studies. In 1540 he moved to Montpellier to study at the medical school and met the naturalists Guillaume Rondelet (1507–1566) and Pierre Belon (1517–1564). He received his medical degree at Basel in February 1541 and returned to Zurich to lecture on mathematics, physics, astronomy, philosophy, and ethics at the Carolinum, to practice medicine, and to write and publish prolifically in many areas. He made one trip to Spain and Italy in 1543, studying manuscripts and meeting naturalists, and another to Augsburg in 1545, where he read the Greek naturalist Aelian (fl. c. 175–c. 235 C.E.) in manuscript; he was later to edit the text (1556). Gessner's Bibliotheca Universalis (1545; Universal Bibliography) and Pandectarum libri (1548; Universal Bibliography, Vol. 2) brought him fame, which increased with his later works. He became a European clearinghouse, gathering and juxtaposing with his own natural historical information from such people as William Turner (c. 1508–1568) and John Caius (1510–1573) of England, Ippolito Salviani (1514–1572) and Pierandrea Mattioli (1501–1578) of Italy, Leonhard Fuchs (1501–1566) and Valerius Cordus (1515–1544) of Germany, and Belon and Rondelet in his five-volume Historiae Animalium (1551–1587; Histories of animals) and its three-volume picture book version, Icones (1553–1560; Images). He also published a Historia Plantarum (History of plants, 1541), and prepared botanical manuscripts, published partially by Casimir Christoph Schmiedel (1718–1792), Gessner's biographer in the eighteenth-century, and wholly in a recent edition (Conradi Gesneri Historia Plantarum Faksimileausgabe [Conrad Gessner's history of plants, facsimile edition], 1972–1980, 1987–1991). He died ministering to victims of the plague in Zurich on 13 December 1565.

Gessner epitomizes the scientific and philological spirit of fifteenth- and early-sixteenth-century humanism, in which the search for historical truth meets the search for truth about the world around us. In his case, these interests focused on natural history. He has been called the father of modern bibliography, and of modern zoology as well.

Bibliography

Fischer, Hans, Georges Petit, Joachim Staedtke, Rudolf Steiger, and Heinrich Zoller. Conrad Gessner, 1516–1565: Universalgelehrter, Naturforscher, Arzt. Zürich, 1967.

Leu, Urs B. Conrad Gesner als Theologe: ein Beitrag zur Zürcher Geistesgeschichte des 16. Jahrhunderts. Bern and New York, 1990.

Pyle, C. M. "Conrad Gessner on the Spelling of his Name." Archives of Natural History, 27 (2000): 175–186.

Wellisch, Hans. Conrad Gessner: A Bio-bibliography. Zug, Switzerland, 1984.

—CYNTHIA M. PYLE

Conrad Gessner
Born	March 26, 1516(1516-03-26) Zürich
Died	December 13, 1565 (aged 49)
Nationality	Swiss
Fields	Botany & Zoology
Alma mater	University of Strasbourg and University of Bourges
Author abbreviation (botany)	Gesner

Konrad Gessner (Conrad Gessner, Conrad Geßner, Conrad von Gesner, Conradus Gesnerus, Conrad Gesner; 26 March 1516 – 13 December 1565) was a Swiss naturalist and bibliographer. His five-volume Historiae animalium (1551-1558) is considered the beginning of modern zoology, and the flowering plant genus Gesneria (Gesneriaceae) is named after him. This botanist is denoted by the author abbreviation Gesner when citing a botanical name.^[1]

Contents 1 Birth and education 2 Career 3 Notes 4 See Also 5 References 6 External links

Birth and education

Born and educated in Zürich, he was the son of a furrier. After the death of his father at the Battle of Kappel (1531), he was very short of money. He had good friends, however, in his old master, Oswald Myconius, and subsequently in Heinrich Bullinger, and he was enabled to continue his studies at the universities of Strassburg and Bourges (1532-1533); in Paris, he found a generous patron in the person of Job Steiger of Berne.

Career

Conrad Gessner memorial at Botanical Garden Zürich

In 1535, religious unrest drove him back to Zürich, where he made an imprudent marriage. His friends again came to his aid, enabled him to study at Basel (1536), and in 1537 obtained for him the professorship of Greek at the newly founded academy of Lausanne (then belonging to Berne). Here he had leisure to devote himself to scientific studies, especially botany. In 1540-1541 he visited the famous medical university of Montpellier, took his degree of doctor of medicine (1541) at Basel, and then settled down to practise at Zürich, where he obtained the post of lecturer in physics at the Carolinum, the precursor of the University of Zürich. There, apart from a few journeys to foreign countries, and annual summer botanical journeys in his native land, he passed the remainder of his life. He devoted himself to preparing works on many subjects of different sorts. He died of the plague, the year after his ennoblement.

To his contemporaries he was best known as a botanist, though his botanical manuscripts were not published till long after his death (at Nuremberg, 1751-1771, 2 vols. folio), he himself issuing only the Enchiridion historiae plantarum (1541) and the Catalogus plantarum (1542) in four languages. In 1545 he published his remarkable Bibliotheca universalis (ed. by J. Simler, 1574), supposedly a catalogue (in Latin, Greek and Hebrew) of all writers who had ever lived, with the titles of their works, etc. A second part, Pandectarium sive partitionum universalium Conradi Gesneri Ligurini libri xxi, appeared in 1548; only nineteen books being then concluded. The last, a theological encyclopaedia, was published in 1549, but the last but one, intended to include his medical work, was never finished.

Porcupine, from the first volume of Historiae animalium (Zürich, 1551).

Fragaria vesca in 'Conradi Gesneri Historia plantarum'

His great zoological work, Historiae animalium, appeared in 4 vols. (quadrupeds, birds, fishes) folio, 1551-1558, at Zürich, a fifth (snakes) being issued in 1587 (there is a German translation, entitled Thierbuch, of the first 4 vols., Zürich, 1563): this work is the starting-point of modern zoology. Not content with such vast works, Gessner put forth in 1555 his book entitled Mithridates de differentis linguis, an account of about 130 known languages, with the Lord's Prayer in twenty-two languages, while in 1556 appeared his edition of the works of Claudius Aelianus.

To non-scientific readers, Gessner is best known for his love of mountains (below the snow-line) and for his many excursions among them, undertaken partly as a botanist, but also for the sake of exercise and enjoyment of the beauties of nature. In 1541 he prefixed to his Libellus de lacte et operibus lactariis a letter addressed to his friend, J. Vogel, of Glarus, as to the wonders to be found among the mountains, declaring his love for them, and his firm resolve to climb at least one mountain every year, not only to collect flowers, but in order to exercise his body. In 1555 Gessner issued his narrative (Descriptio Montis Fracti sive Montis Pilati) of his excursion to the Gnepfstein (1920 m), the lowest point in the Pilatus chain.

Notes

• Gessner was the first to describe the brown rat in Europe.^[2]
• Gessner was the first to document the pencil in 1565.
• Gessner was featured on the 50 Swiss francs banknotes issued between 1978 and 1994.
• Gessner was partly responsible for Insectorum, sive, Minimorum animalium theatrum or Theatre of Insects, This work was written jointly by Gessner (posthumously) , Edward Wotton, Thomas Muffet and Thomas Penny
• Gessner in 1551 was the first to describe adipose tissue.^[3]
• Among his friends was John Caius, court physician to the Tudors and second founder of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.

See Also

• Bloodhound for another picture from Gessner's work

References

1. ^ Brummitt, R. K.; C. E. Powell (1992). Authors of Plant Names. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. ISBN 1-84246-085-4. 
2. ^ Freye, H.A., and Thenius, E. (1968) Die Nagetiere. Grzimeks Tierleben. (B. Grzimek, ed.) Volume 11. Kindler, Zurich. pp. 204-211.
3. ^ Cannon B, Nedergaard J. (2008). Developmental biology: Neither fat nor flesh. Nature. Aug 21;454(7207):947-8. PubMed

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
  • Biographies were written by J. Hanhari (Winterthur, 1824) and J. Simler (Zürich, 1566).
  • C. M. Pyle, “Conrad Gessner on the Spelling of his Name,” Archives of Natural History, 27 (2000), 175-186.
  • Idem, “Conrad Gessner,” in Encyclopedia of the Scientific Revolution from Copernicus to Newton, ed. Wilbur Applebaum, New York, Garland, 2000, 265-266.
  • Idem, “Conrad Gessner” in Europe 1450-1789: Encyclopedia of the Early Modern World, Ed. Jonathan Dewald, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 2004.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Conrad Gesner

• Theatre of Insects
• Online version of Insectorvm Sive Minimorum Animalivm Theatrvm from GDZ
• Conrad Gesner's Thierbuch, Vogelbuch, Fischbuch, Schlangenbuch, De Scorpione - Reproductions of books.
• Urs B. Leu: Konrad Gessner in German, French and Italian in the online Historical Dictionary of Switzerland.
• Page through a virtual copy of Gessner's Historiae Animalium
• The Natural History of Horses, with Memoir of Gesner by Charles Hamilton Smith

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