page_title: Petrus Camper
section_title: Studies and teaching
hierarchical_section_title: Petrus Camper / Studies and teaching
caption_attribution_description: Frysk: Frjentsjer, de akademy fan FryslânNederlands: Franeker, De academia van Vrieslant
context_page_description: Petrus Camper FRS, was a Dutch physician, anatomist, physiologist, midwife, zoologist, anthropologist, palaeontologist and a naturalist in the Age of Enlightenment. He was one of the first to take an interest in comparative anatomy, palaeontology, and the facial angle. He was among the first to mark out an "anthropology," which he distinguished from natural history. He studied the orangutan, the javan rhinoceros, and the skull of a mosasaur, which he believed was a whale. Camper was a celebrity in Europe and became a member of the Royal Society, the Göttingen, and Russian Academy of Sciences, the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the French and the Prussian Academy of Sciences. He designed and constructed tools for his patients, and for surgeries. He was amateur-drawer, a sculptor, a patron of art and a conservative, royalist politician. Camper published some lectures containing an account of his craniometrical methods. These laid the foundation of all subsequent work.
context_section_description: Petrus Camper was the son of a well-to-do minister, who made his fortune Batavia, Dutch East Indies and returned with a (young?) pickled Bornean orangutan in a jar. A brilliant alumnus, he studied medicine and philosophy at the University of Leiden and obtained a degree in both sciences on the same day at the age of 24. After both his parents died Camper travelled to England (where he met with William Smellie), to France (where he met with Georges de Buffon) and Geneva. In the meantime he was appointed as professor of philosophy, anatomy and surgery at the University of Franeker and Camper traveled to Friesland.
  In 1756, Camper married the widow Johanna Boerboom, daughter of the burgomaster of Leeuwarden, whom he met while treating her husband, the burgomaster from Harlingen.
caption: The Academia van Vrieslant in Franeker
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