Abstract
THOUGH as a science, the birth of geology dates only from the latter part of the eighteenth century, prior to that many men had been interested in the study of rocks and fossils and had recorded valuable observations. Among these men was the Swiss doctor, Johann Jacob Scheuchzer, the bicentenary of whose death occurs on June 25. Born at Zurich on August 4, 1672, Scheuchzer qualified as a doctor at Utrecht and paid some attention to mathematics. For many years he held a professorship in his native city. His main interest, however, was in natural history and especially in fossils and minerals. He translated Woodward's “Natural History of the Earth” into Latin and published several works of his own. Included in these was his “Itinera per Helvetia Alpinas Regiones”(1702-11), in which for the first time glaciers are mentioned as a subject for scientific investigation. He gave careful descriptions of several glaciers he had visited and explained their movement as a result of the infiltration and freezing of water in cracks and other spaces. He was thus the founder of the theory of dilatation, afterwards advocated by Charpentier and Agassiz. His natural history of Switzerland contains a special chapter dealing with what Scheuchzer thought were fossils left by the Great Deluge, and towards the close of his life he thought he had discovered in the beds at Oeningen, between Constance and Schaffhausen, the skeleton of one of the “infamous men whose sins brought upon the world the dire misfortune”. But the supposed Homo diluvii was afterwards shown by Cuvier to be a reptile and it was called Andrias Scheuchzeri in honour of its discoverer. The specimen was presented to the Teyler Museum at Haarlem.
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Johann Jacob Scheuchzer, 1672—1733. Nature 131, 902 (1933). https://doi.org/10.1038/131902b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/131902b0