Sigmund Zois

Sigmund's father Michelangelo Zois (1694–1777) was a merchant from Lombardy[1] that moved to Ljubljana, where he made a considerable fortune in dealing with iron and holding mines.

Carolus Josephus Kappus von Pichelstein, a nephew of Marcus Antonius, was member of the Academia Operosorum, which was founded in Ljubljana in 1693 after the example of similar academies in Italy.

After returning to Ljubljana to assist in business, he studied natural sciences with Gabriel Gruber and Giuseppe Maffei and inherited his father's wealth in 1777.

Leaving the management of his economic entities to his cousin, he developed a strong interest in sciences and started to meet with Baltazar Hacquet, who taught anatomy in Ljubljana from 1773 to 1787, and several Slovene intellectuals of the time.

Jurij Japelj and Blaž Kumerdej (the two published the Bible in Slovene), Anton Tomaž Linhart, Valentin Vodnik (from 1793) and Jernej Kopitar (from 1803) were the most prominent members of what became known as the “Zois circle”.

In Ljubljana, Zois initiated and sponsored the construction of roads, the foundation of the botanical garden and a (German) theatre (whose main shareholder he became) and the enlargement of the lyceal library.

His translation of the poem Lenore by Gottfried August Burger was regarded as a complete failure, and Zois himself later came to the conclusion that Slovene was "too mediocre and rough" to allow for such a literary achievement.

[8] He supported the work of his brother, the botanist Karl Zois, who, among other things, discovered the Campanula zoysii, a previously unknown Carniolan flower.