Athanasius Kircher’s Life and Works

Athanasius Kircher (1602–1680) was born in the small town of Geisa, near Fulda (Germany). He studied at the Jesuit college in Fulda and in 1618 joined the Society of Jesus in 1540, at the novitiate of Paderborn and studied philosophy and theology at Münster, Cologne and Koblenz. During these studies, Kircher began to get interested in ancient languages and mathematics which at that time included in addition to geometry and algebra, astronomy, optics, mechanics, and experimental physics, two subjects that will become his lifelong passion. Kircher took up teaching duties at the Collegio Romano, Rome, in 1634, writing his many books, working at his museum, and keeping a large correspondence, where he died at the advanced age of seventy-eight years. At Rome, among other sources for his books, Kircher had access to the information that arrived from Jesuits in different parts of the world, especially from missionaries in Asia and America. Kircher’s activity spread over a great variety of subjects to which he dedicated his universal curiosity. In his studies, Kircher used a combination of the scholastic version of Aristotelian natural philosophy with mathematical applications and a continuous recourse to experiments and observations as demonstrative arguments, following in this way the lines of the new experimental sciences which were just beginning. He established a museum in some rooms of the college which was soon known as the Museum Kircherianum. Kircher stands out above all as a prolific writer with thirty-three books. In addition to the three books that are the main subject of this study, a short notice is given here about some other of Kircher’s books.