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portrait of kircher at age 53 athanasius kircher.jpg athanasius kircher
 athanasius kircher , s.j.
athanasius kircher

athanasius kircher , s.j. -lrb- sometimes erroneously spelled kirchner ; 1602 -- 1680 -rrb- was a 17th-century german jesuit scholar and polymath who published around 40 major works , most notably in the fields of comparative religion , geology , and medicine .
kircher has been compared to fellow jesuit roger boscovich and to leonardo da vinci for his enormous range of interests , and has been honored with the title `` master of a hundred arts '' .
a resurgence of interest in kircher has occurred within the scholarly community in recent decades .
kircher claimed to have deciphered the hieroglyphic writing of the ancient egyptian language , but most of his assumptions and translations in this field were later found to be nonsensical .
he did , however , correctly establish the link between the ancient egyptian and the modern coptic languages , and some commentators regard him as the founder of egyptology .
he is known to have read the work of ibn wahshiyya , who had proposed the link between ancient and coptic egyptian centuries earlier .
kircher was also fascinated with sinology and wrote an encyclopedia of china , in which he noted the early presence there of nestorian christians while also attempting to establish links with egypt and christianity that modern scholars regard as largely imaginary .
kircher 's work in geology included studies of volcanoes and fossils .
one of the first people to observe microbes through a microscope , kircher was ahead of his time in proposing that the plague was caused by an infectious microorganism and in suggesting effective measures to prevent the spread of the disease .
kircher also displayed a keen interest in technology and mechanical inventions ; inventions attributed to him include a magnetic clock , various automatons and the first megaphone .
the invention of the magic lantern is often misattributed to kircher , although he did conduct a study of the principles involved in his `` ars magna lucis et umbrae '' .
a scientific star in his day , towards the end of his life he was eclipsed by the rationalism of rené descartes and others .
in the late 20th century , however , the aesthetic qualities of his work again began to be appreciated .
one modern scholar , alan cutler , described kircher as `` a giant among seventeenth-century scholars '' , and `` one of the last thinkers who could rightfully claim all knowledge as his domain '' .
another scholar , edward w. schmidt , referred to kircher as `` the last renaissance man '' .
in `` a man of misconceptions , '' his 2012 book about kircher , john glassie writes that while `` many of kircher 's actual ideas today seem wildly off-base , if not simply bizarre , '' he was `` a champion of wonder , a man of awe-inspiring erudition and inventiveness , '' whose work was read `` by the smartest minds of the time . ''
