Everything about J J Becher totally explained
Johann Joachim Becher (
May 6,
1635 – October
1682), was a
German physician,
alchemist, precursor of
Chemistry, scholar and adventurer, best known for his development of the
Phlogiston theory.
He was born in
Speyer. His father, a
Lutheran minister, died while he was a child, leaving a widow and three children. 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 practiced several small handicrafts, and devoting his nights to study of the most miscellaneous description and 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
1660; and the next year appeared his
Character pro notitia linguarum universali, in which he gives 10,000 words for use as a
universal language. In
1663, he published his
Oedipum Chemicum and a book on animals, plants and minerals (
Thier- Kräuter- und Bergbuch). At the same time, he was full of schemes, practical and impractical.
Chemistry as an earnest and respectable science is often said to date from 1661, when Robert Boyle of Oxford published The Sceptical Chymist—the first work to distinguish between chemists and alchemists—but it was a slow and often erratic transition. Into the eighteenth century scholars could feel oddly comfortable in both camps—like the German Johann Becher, who produced sober and unexceptionable work on mineralogy called Physica Subterranea, but who also was certain that, given the right materials, he could make himself invisible.
Wandering scholar
In
1657, he was appointed professor of medicine at the
University of Mainz and body-physician to the archbishop-
elector. In
1666, he was made councillor of commerce (Commerzienrat) at
Vienna, where he'd gained the powerful support of
Albrecht, Count Zinzendorf, prime minister and grand chamberlain of the emperor
Leopold I. Sent by the emperor on a mission to the
Netherlands, he wrote there in ten days his
Methodus Didactica, which was followed by the
Regeln der Christlichen Bundesgenossenschaft and the
Politischer Discurs von den eigentlichen Ursachen des Auf- und Abnehmens der Städte, Länder und Republiken. In
1669, he published his
Physica subterranea, 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'd been appointed physician to the elector of
Bavaria; but in
1670 he was again in
Vienna advising on the establishment of a silk factory and propounding schemes for a great company to trade with the
Low Countries and for a canal to unite the
Rhine and
Danube.
1678 he crossed to
England. He traveled to
Scotland where he visited the mines at the request of
Prince Rupert. He afterwards went for the same purpose to
Cornwall, where he spent a year. At the beginning of
1680, he presented a paper to the
Royal Society in which he attempted to deprive
Huygens of the honour of applying the pendulum to the
measurement of time. In
1682, he returned to
London, where he wrote the
Chymischer Glücks-Hafen, Oder Grosse Chymische Concordantz Und Collection, Von funffzehen hundert Chymischen Processen and died in October of the same year.
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