Helping San Diego, California and beyond since 1997.
Do you need
volunteer, community service, work, military or court hours?
|
|
Helping San Diego, California and beyond since 1997.
|
|
Click here and add this page to your favorites!
|
Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: BAR-BEC |
|
|
BECHER, JOHANN JOACHIM (1635-1682) , German chemist, physician, scholar and adventurer, was born at Spires in 1635 His father, a Lutheran minister, died while he was yet a child, leaving a widow and three children. The mother married again; the stepfather spent the tiny patrimony of the children; and at the age of thirteen Becher found himself responsible not only for his own support but also for that of his mother and brothers. He learned and practised several small handicrafts, and devoting his nights to study of the most miscellaneous description earned a pittance by teaching. In 1654, at the age of nineteen, he published an-edition of Salzthal's Tractatus de lapide trismegisto; his Metallurgia followed in 166o; and the next year appeared his Character pro notitia linguarum universali, in which he gives 1o,000 words for use as a universal language. In 1663 he published his Oedipum Chemicum and a book on animals, plants and minerals (Thier- Krauter- and Bergbuch). At the same time he was full of schemes, practical and unpractical. He negotiated with the elector palatine for the establishment
medicine at Mainz and body
Leopold I. Sent by the emperor on a mission to Holland, he there wrote in ten days his Alethodus Didactica, which was followed by the Regeln der Christlichen Bundesgenossenschaft and the Politischer Discurs vom Auf- and Abbluhen der Stddte. In 1669 he published his Physica subleeranea, and the same year was engaged with the count of Hanau in a scheme for settling a large territory between the Orinoco and the Amazon. Meanwhile he had been appointed physician to the elector of Bavaria; but in 167o he was again in Vienna advising on the establishment
Leopold . His Psychosophia followed, and " An invitation to a psychological community " (Einladung zu einer psychologischen Societal), for the realization of which Duke Gustavus Adolphus of Mecklenburg-Gustrow
Cornwall
paper to the Royal Society, De nova temporis dimetiendi ratione et accurata horologiorum construction, in which he attempted to deprive Huygens of the honour of applying the pendulum to the measurement of time. The views of Becher on the composition of substances mark little essential advance on those of the two preceding centuries, and the three elements or principles of salt, mercury and sulphur reappear as the vitrifiable, the mercurial and the combustible earths. When a substance was burnt he supposed that the last of these, the terra pinguis, was liberated, and this conception is the basis on which G. E. Stahl founded his doctrine of " phlogiston." His ideas and experiments on the nature of minerals and other substances are voluminously set forth in his Physica Subterranea (Frankfort, 1669) ; an edition of this, published at Leipzig
paper on timepieces already mentioned and also Specimen Becherianum, a summary of his doctrines by Stahl, who in the preface acknowledges indebtedness to him in the words Becheriana stint Time prof ero. At Falmouth he wrote his Laboratorium portabile and at Truro the Alphabetum minerale. In 1682 he returned to London, where he wrote the Chemischer Gliickshafen oder grosse Concordanz and Collection von 1500 Processen and died in October of the same year.End of Article: BECHER, JOHANN JOACHIM (1635-1682) If you wish, you can link directly to this article.
<a href="http://jcsm.org/StudyCenter/Encyclopedia/BAR_BEC/BECHER_JOHANN_JOACHIM_1635_168.html"> BECHER, JOHANN JOACHIM (1635-1682) </a> |
|
|
(Previous) BECERRA, GASPAR (1520-1570) |
(Next) BECHUANA |
|
Sponsored Advertisements