Tuesday, January 10, 2006

Born Today: Nicolaus Steno

Jan. 10, 1683 - Nov. 26, 1686

Steno was born in Copenhagen where he studied medicine. After brief visits to Paris and Rome he worked in Florence as an anatomist.From there he carried out extensive geological studies through Italy, Austria, Germany and the Netherlands. After having returned to Florence he converted from Lutheran to Catholic faith and was ordained as a priest. He dedicated himself in various religious positions to the dissemination of the Catholic faith. With his treatise on solid bodies that by nature are enclosed in other solid bodies, he became the founder of palaeontology as well as of geology and assumed in his theory of earthquakes that they occur due to the raising and subsidence of earth strata.

Info from HERE. Image from HERE. Visit the Steno Museum HERE