Muuml;ller, Johann (1)
Muuml;ller, Johann
Physiologist and comparative anatomist, b. at Coblenz, 14 July, 1801; d. at Berlin, 28 April, 1858. He was the son of a shoemaker, but his mother succeeded in obtaining for him a good education. During his college course at Coblenz, he devoted himself to the classics and made his own translations of Aristotle. His first intention was to be a priest, but at eighteen his love for natural science turned him to medicine and he entered the University of Bonn in 1819. While a student he won a prize for original work on “Respiration of the Foetus,” a thesis that has been declared the best scientific work ever presented by a student in a prize competition. He received his degree of doctor for a thesis on animal movement. In 1824 he became Privatdocent at Bonn, and in 1830 ordinary professor of medicine. Before teaching at Bonn, he had studied for two years with Rudolphi at Berlin, and in 1832 was appointed his successor in the professorship of anatomy there. In 1847 he was elected Rector of the University.
Müller is justly regarded as the founder of modern physiology. His claim to this title rests not only upon his personal contributions to the science, but also upon his power of co- ordinating the results obtained by his predecessors, and of directing into new fields of investigation the disciples who profited by his suggestive teaching. To accuracy of observation he added such a grasp of principles and so clear a comprehension of the bearing of other sciences upon physiology that his reasoning, based throughout upon facts, is philosophical in breadth and penetration.
His first monograph, an elaboration of his prize essay, “De respiratione foetus,” was published in 1823, and was followed (1826) by two others on optical illusions and on the comparative physiology of vision. The last-named abounds in observation upon the structure and functions of the eye in lower animals, especially in insects. Among the other subjects to which Müller devoted careful and successful research may be mentioned: reflex action, the chemical composition of blood plasma, the presence of chondrin in cartilage, hermaphroditism in human beings, the minute structure and origin of glands in man and animals, the lymph hearts of amphibia, and those ducts of the preliminary kidney in the foetus which have since been called by his name. His study of the lower animals resulted in the discovery of alternate generations and in a satisfactory account of the metamorphoses of echinodermata.
From 1834 to 1840 he edited the “Archives of Anatomy and Physiology” (Müller’s Archives) and contributed articles to various scientific reviews. His own contributions to medical literature number over two hundred, most of them of great significance. His principal work is the “Handbuch der Physiologie des Menschen,” which was published in 1833 and has appeared in numerous editions and translations. But the benefit which he rendered to science as an original investigator and medical editor is surpassed by his work as a teacher. Among his pupils were most of the men who made Germany the Mecca for scientific students in the latter half of the nineteenth century. They included Virchow, Helmholtz, Schwann, Du Bois-Reymond, Lieberkühn, Max Schultze, Brücke, Claparéde, Haeckel, Henle, Guido Wagener, Reichert, Ludwig, Vierordt, and Kölliker. All of these men agree in proclaiming him the foremost physiologist of his time. Most of the important scientific societies of the world honoured him. Throughout his life he was loyal in his adherence to the Catholic Church, and his fellow-Catholics of the Rhine have erected a noble monument to his memory at Coblenz.
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VIRCHOW, Johann Müller (Berlin, 1858); BRUECKE, Medical Times and Gazette (London, 17 July, 1858); DU BOIS-REYMOND, Gedaechtnissrede auf Johannes Müller (Berlin, 1860); WALSH, Makers of Modern Medicine (New York, 1910).
JAMES J. WALSH Transcribed by John Fobian In memory of Janet Callander
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XCopyright © 1911 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, October 1, 1911. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., CensorImprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York
Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia
Muuml;ller, Johann (1)
(Regiomontanus).
German astronomer, b. in or near Königsberg, a small town in lower Franconia (Dukedom of Coburg), 6 June, 1436; d. in Rome, 6 July, 1476. The name of the family agreed with the trade of the father who operated a mill. Regiomontanus signed himself Johannes de Monteregio, while in foreign countries he was known as Joannes Germanus or Francus. His calendars were published under various names, like Meister Hans von Kungsberg. About the age of twelve he was sent to Leipzig to study dialectics. In the university matriculations (published by Erler, 1895) his name is not registered. Hearing of the celebrated astronomer Peurbach (George of Peurbach in Upper Austria, 1423-61), Müller left Leipzig for Vienna, where he was matriculated in 1450 as Johannes Molitoris de Kunigsperg. In 1452 he received the baccalaureate and in 1457 the title Magister. Lectures of his at the university are recorded as follows: in 1458 on perspective, in 1460 on Euclid, in 1461 on Virgil’s Bucolics. His master and friend Peurbach showed him how incorrect were the Alphonsine Tables and how false the Latin translations of the Greek astronomers from intermediate Arabic translations. Together they observed the planet Mars two degrees off the place assigned to it and a lunar eclipse over an hour late on the Tables. A new field opened to the two astronomers with the arrival in Vienna of the Greek scholar Cardinal Bessarion of Trebizond, then papal legate to the emperor, and his brother Sigismund, for the purpose of adjusting differences and uniting them against the Turks. Having changed to the Latin Rite, Bessarion mastered the Latin language like his own, and commenced translating Ptolemy directly from the Greek. On the other hand Peurbach was engaged in composing an epitome on Ptolemy’s “Almagest”. The double circumstance that neither of them was able to accomplish his task, the one for want of time, the other for not knowing Greek, brought about an agreement that Peurbach should accompany Bessarion to Italy together with Regiomontanus. Peurbach died 8 April, 1461, not yet thirty-eight years old, and left the “Epitome” to his pupil to be finished and published as a sacred legacy. In company with his new patron, Müller reached Rome in the Fall of 1461. Under George of Trebizond and other teachers he acquired so much knowledge of Greek that he understood all of the obscure points of the “Epitome” of his late master. During his stay in Italy Müller continually observed the sun, the moon, and the planets, and searched the libraries for Greek manuscripts. He found another lunar eclipse over an hour in advance of the Tables. What manuscripts he could not acquire he had copied. A new Testament, written in Greek by his own hands, was his companion. The summer of 1462 was spent at Viterbo, and when Bessarion left for Greece in the Fall of the same year, Müller accompanied him as far as Venice. On the recommendation of his patron, Müller was well received in various Italian cities. In Ferrara he became acquainted with an old friend of Peurbach, Bianchini, then ninety years of age, with Theodore of Gaza, and with Guarini. He profited so well in the knowledge of Greek that he understood the whole of Ptolemy, and was able to complete the “Epitome” of Peurbach by adding seven books to the six already written by his master. In Padua he was at once enrolled among the Academicians and was invited to lecture. While awaiting the return of his patron in Venice, he discovered a portion of the Greek Arithmetic of Diophantus, continued his observations, refuted the quadrature of the circle given by Cuse, and computed a calendar with the places of sun and moon, the eclipses and the dates of Easter for the next thirty years. After two years’ absence from Rome, Müller returned there alone in October, 1464, to spend four more years in studying and copying. His rich collection of manuscripts comprised at that time Bessarion’s own copy of the Greek “Almagest”. Müller was now able to point out grave errors in the commentaries on Ptolemy and Theon by George of Trebizond. The consequent enmity of the latter, and the absence of his patron, may have induced him to leave Italy in 1468. The university registers in Vienna contain no record of Müller ever resuming his lectures after his return. The next three years, or part of them, he seems to have spent in Buda, being recommended by the Archbishop of Gran to King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary as custodian of the libary, so rich in spoils from Athens and Constantinople. The ensuing wars of the king in Bohemia led Müller to look for a place where he could carry out his life’s plan: the determination of the astronomical constants by observation and the publication of the literary treasures in print. Nüremberg, then the centre of industry and commerce in southern Germany, was his choice, and in the Fall of 1471 he was admitted to the city and even invited to lecture. A wealthy citizen, Bernhard Walther, furnished the means for an instrument shop, an observatory, and a printing office and joined Müller in the work. The fruits soon appeared. The latitude of the place (49° 24′) and the obliquity of the ecliptic (23° 28′) were determined free from the effects of refraction; the planet Venus was made the link between the fixed stars and the sun, instead of the moon; the great comet of 1472 was observed during January and February in such a way that its orbit could be calculated. Halley writes: “This comet is the very first of which any proper observations have been handed down to us” (Phil. Trans. XXIV, 1706, p. 1883). The earlier observations of the comet of 1450 by Toscanelli, were unknown to Halley, although the comet happened to be the one that bears his name. The printing office of Walther, with the improved methods and types of Müller, turned out Peurbach’s New Theory of the Comets and an astronomical poem of Manilius (1472-73); then Müller’s own “Calendarium Novum” and his astronomical “Ephemerides” (1473-74) with the positions of the sun, moon, and planets, and the eclipses from 1475 to 1500. The latter guided Columbus to America and enabled him to predict the lunar eclipse of 29 February, 1504. Müller’s scientific activity in Nüremberg was brought to a close by a letter of Sixtus IV calling him to Rome for the purpose of finally settling the reform of the calendar. Gassendi relates, on the authority of Peter Ramus (1515-72) and of Paul Jovius (Giovio; 1483-1552), both humanists, that Müller was created Bishop of Ratisbon. Jovius writes in his “Eulogies appended to the true pictures of celebrated men” in the museum of Como (p. 75): “Ab hac commendatione eruditi nominis creatus est a Xysto Quarto Ratisponensis Episcopus” etc. This testimony of a man contemporary of Regiomontanus is not improbable, since by this dignitary title the pope could give more force to his invitation. Yet it seems certain that Müller never occupied the episcopal chair. Whether a papal command was needed, or whether the world’s problem of adjusting the calendar had in itself sufficient attraction, Müller was again in Rome towards the end of 1475. Death overtook him in less than a year at the age of forty, and the Panthéon is said to be his resting-place, although his tomb is unknown. The cause of his death was, according to Jovius, a pestilence then raging in Rome; but according to Ramus, poison administered to him by the sons of his enemy, George of Trebizond. The historical exactness of Ramus, however, is very doubtful from his poetical stories of the iron fly and the wooden eagle, said to have been constructed in the laboratories of Nüremberg. In consequence of the untimely death of Müller, many of his works and manuscripts were lost, in particular everything on the reform of the calendar. Some works were published posthumously, like the five books on triangles and the quadrature of the circle (Nüremberg, 1533); his trigonometry (1541); the “Scripta Cl. Math. fo. Regiomontani” (1544); the “Epitome” on Ptolemy’s Almagest (Venice, 1496); and part of his correspondence with Bessarion, Roder, Bianchini, and other scientists. The principal works are reviewed by Gassendi; the astronomical books are described by Delambre; and the mathematical treatises are discussed by Cantor. Bibliographies on Regiomontanus are enumerated by Stern and Ziegler. A statue of Müller was erected in the market-place of Königsberg in 1873.
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JOVIUS, Imagines clarorum vivorum; RAMUS, Scholarum mathematicarum libri XXXI (Basle, 1569), 65; GASSENDI, Opere, V (Lyons, 1658), Miscellanea; MONTUCLA, Histoire des Mathématiques (Ann. VII), I, 541-547; DELAMERE, Histoire de l’astronomie du Moyen Age (Paris, 1819), 285-365; STERN in ESCH-GRUBER’s Encyclopädie, II (Leipzig, 1843), 205-213; ASCHBACH, Gesch. der Wiener Universität, I (Vienna, 1865), 537-557; ZIEGLER, Regiomontanus, ein geistreicher Vorläufer des Columbus (Dresden, 1874); WOLF, Gesch. der Astronomie (Munich, 1877); GÜNTHER in Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, XXII (Leipzig, 1885), 564-581; CANTOR in SCHLÖMILCH’s Zeitschrift, XIX (1874), Literaturz., 41-53; IDEM, Vorlesungen über Gesch. der Mathematik, II (Leipzig, 1900), 254-289.
J.G. HAGEN Transcribed by WGKofron With thanks to Fr. John Hilkert and St. Mary’s Church, Akron, Ohio
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XCopyright © 1911 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, October 1, 1911. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., CensorImprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York