Johann Jakob Scheuchzer

Johann Jakob Scheuchzer (2 August 1672 – 23 June 1733) was a Swiss physician and natural scientist born in Zürich.

His most famous work was the Physica sacra in four volumes, which was a commentary on the Bible and included his view of the world, demonstrating a convergence of science and religion.

Early in 1694, he took his degree of doctor in medicine at the University of Utrecht, and then returned to Altdorf bei Nürnberg to complete his mathematical studies.

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-like views.

He was promoted to the chair of physics, with the office of senior city physician (Stadtarzt), in January 1733, only a few months before his death.

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.

[4] Scheuchzer's works, as issued in 1746 and in 1752, formed (with Tschudi's Chronicum Helveticum) one of the chief sources for Schiller's drama Wilhelm Tell (1804).

[1] In the second category are his Itinera alpina tria[5] (made in 1702–04), which was published in London in 1708, and dedicated to the Royal Society, while the plates illustrating it were executed at the expense of various fellows of the society, including the president, Sir Isaac Newton (whose imprimatur appears on the title-page), Sir Hans Sloane, Dean Aldrich, Humfrey Wanley, etc.

Most famously, he claimed that a fossilized skeleton found in a Baden quarry was the remains of a human who had perished in the deluge.