Johann Baptiste Horvath

Johann Baptiste Horvath (Hungarian: Keresztély János Horváth, 13 July 1732 in Kőszeg – 20 October 1799 in Buda)[citation needed] was a Hungarian Jesuit Professor of Physics and Philosophy at the Catholic university for teaching theology and philosophy in Nagyszombat, Kingdom of Hungary (now Trnava, Slovakia).

The coverage is eclectic, including topics like the aurora borealis, combustion, sound, rainbows, botany and lightning.

He was among the most important Central European physics textbook authors in the 18th century (see also Andreas Jaszlinszky as well as Leopold Biwald and Joseph Redlhamer), and an innovative proponent of Newtonian mechanics, which in hindsight was the correct theory rather than the Cartesian mechanics popular among some Continental philosophers.

[12][13][14][15] By promoting the methods of Copernicus and Newton, influenced by the approach of Borgondio and Boscovich, Horvath represents a (correct) departure from "accepted" thinking in that region of Europe, and his works were widely distributed.

An example of near-contemporary notes regarding one of these textbooks is given below, where the reader is attempting to derive Prop 280 from Physica Generalis, involving the force on a body in a circular orbit.