Johann Jakob Scheuchzer (2 August 1672 – 23 June 1733) was a Swiss physician and natural scientist born at Zürich. His most famous work was the Physica sacra in four volumes which was a commentary on the Bible and his views on the world demonstrating a convergence of science and religion. It was filled with copperplate etchings and came to be called the Kupfer-Bibel or "Copper Bible". He supported Biblical creation but his support for a Copernican heliocentric system forced him to print his works outside Switzerland. He supported Neptunism and considered fossils as evidence for the Biblical deluge. A fossil from Ohningen that he identified as a human drowned by the Flood was later identified as a Miocene salamander which was named after him as Andrias scheuchzeri.
Life and career
The son of the namesake senior town physician (Archiater) of Zürich and Barbara Fäsi, daughter of the principal of the Latin school, he received his education in Zürich and, in 1692, went to the University of Altdorf near Nuremberg, being intended for the medical profession. Early in 1694, he took his degree of doctor in medicine at the University of Utrecht, and then returned to Altdorf, Germany to complete his mathematical studies. He studied astronomy under Georg Eimmart. He went back to Zürich in 1696 (following the death of the town physician Johann Jakob Wagner in 1695) and was made junior town physician (Poliater) with the promise of the professorship of mathematics which he duly obtained in 1710. From 1697 he was a secretary at the Collegium der Wohlgesinnten where he gave lectures on philosophy. He also worked as a curator of the Kunstkammer (natural history cabinet) of the city of Zürich. He corresponded widely with other scholars and published in the transactions of the Royal Society where he was elected a Fellow on November 30, 1703 seconded by John Woodward (1665–1728) with whom he shared Neptunist views. He married Susanna Vogel and they had nearly nine children but only a few lived to adulthood. He was promoted to the chair of physics, with the office of senior city physician (), in January 1733, only a few months before his death on 23 June.
Published works
Scheuchzer wrote extensively to Nova literaria Helvetica, the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society and started his own periodicals, Beschreibung der Natur-Geschichten des Schweizerlands and Historischer und politischer Mercurius. He also published works (apart from numerous articles) were estimated at thirty-four in number. He corresponded extensively across Europe with nearly 800 correspondents. These included the theologian Hortensia von Moos, and his many students such as Antonio Picenino (and his father Giacomo Picenino) with whom he went on alpine excursions. His historical writings are mostly still in manuscript. The more important of his published writings relate either to his scientific observations (all branches) or to his journeys, in the course of which he collected materials for these scientific works.
Scientific works
In the former category is his self-published Beschreibung der Naturgeschichte des Schweitzerlandes (3 vols., Zürich, 1706–1708), the third volume containing an account in German of his journey of 1705; a new edition of this book and, with important omissions, of his 1723 work, was issued, in 2 vols, in 1746, by JG Sulzer, under the title of Naturgeschichte des Schweitzerlandes sammt seinen Reisen über die schweitzerischen Gebirge, and his Helvetiae historia naturalis oder Naturhistorie des Schweitzerlandes (published in 3 vols, at Zürich, 1716–1718, and reissued in the same form in 1752, under the German title just given). The first of the three parts of the last-named work deals with the Swiss mountains (summing up all that was then known about them, and serving as a link between Simmler's work of 1574 and Gruner's of 1760), the second with the Swiss rivers, lakes and mineral baths, and the third with Swiss meteorology and geology.
In his Physica sacra he included arguments for the existence of God, suggesting that an atheist should be shown a pin-hole camera and then shown how the eye is a perfect replica of the same, demonstrating intelligent design. He also followed the contemporary tradition of interpreting fossil ammonites as proof of the Biblical deluge. He also described fossil plants in his Herbarium diluvianum (1709). He observed the solar eclipse of 1706 and the lunar eclipse of the same year in which he recorded a Perseid meteor shower.