Conrad Gessner

Work

Conrad Gessner was a Renaissance polymath, a physician, philosopher, encyclopaedist, bibliographer, philologist, natural historian and illustrator. In 1537, at the age of 21, his publication of a Graecolatin dictionary led his sponsors to obtain for him the professorship of Greek at the newly founded academy of Lausanne (then belonging to Bern). Here he had leisure to devote himself to scientific studies, especially botany, and earn money to further his medical studies.

After three years of teaching at Lausanne, Gessner was able to travel to the medical school at the University of Montpellier, where he received his doctoral degree (1541) from Basel. He then returned to Zurich to practice medicine, which he continued to do for the rest of his life. There he was also appointed to the post of lecturer of Aristotelian physics at the Carolinum, the precursor of the University of Zurich.

After 1554 he became the city physician (Stadtarzt). In addition to his duties there, and apart from a few journeys to foreign countries, and annual summer botanical journeys in his native land, and illnesses, he was able to devote himself to research and writing. His expeditions frequently involved visits to mountainous country, below the snow-line. Although primarily for purposes of botanical collection, he also extolled mountain climbing for the sake of exercise and enjoyment of the beauties of nature. In 1541 he prefixed to his treatise on milk and milk products, Libellus de lacte et operibus lactariis a letter addressed to his friend Jacob Avienus (Vogel) of Glarus on the wonders to be found among the mountains, declaring his love for them, and his firm resolve to climb at least one mountain every year, not only to collect flowers, but in order to exercise his body. In 1555 he issued his narrative Descriptio Montis Fracti sive Montis Pilati of his excursion to the Gnepfstein (1920 m), the lowest point in the Pilatus chain.

Gessner is credited with a number of the first descriptions of species in Europe, both animals such as the brown rat (Rattus norvegicus), guinea pig (Cavia porcellus) and turkey (Meleagris), as well as plants such as the tulip (Tulipa gesneriana). He first saw a tulip in April 1559, growing in the garden of the magistrate Johann Heinrich Herwart at Augsburg, and called it Tulipa turcarum, the Turkish tulip. He is also credited with being the first person to describe brown adipose tissue, in 1551, in 1565 the first to document the pencil, and in 1563 among the first Europeans to write about the effects of tobacco.

Legacy

Gessner has been described as the father of modern scientific botany and zoology, and the father of modern bibliography. To his contemporaries he was best known as a botanist. Despite his traveling ways and the job of maintaining his own gardens, Gesner probably spent most of his time inside his own extensive library. He listed among his History of Animals sources more than 80 Greek authors and at least 175 Latin authors, as well as works by German, French, and Italian authors. He even attempted to establish a "universal library" of all books in existence. The project might sound strange to the modern mind, but Gessner invested tremendous energy in the project. He sniffed through remote libraries along with the collections of the Vatican Library and catalogs of printers and booksellers. By assembling this universal library of information, Gessner put together a database centuries before computers would ease such work. He cut relevant passages out of books, grouped the cuttings by general theme, subdivided the groups into more specific categories, and boxed them. He could then retrieve and arrange the cuttings as needed. In the words of science writer Anna Pavord, "He was a one-man search engine, a 16th-century Google with the added bonus of critical evaluation."

To his contemporaries, Gessner was known as "the Swiss Pliny." According to legend, when he knew his time was near, he asked to be taken to his library where he had spent so much of his life, to die among his favorite books. At the time of his death, Gesner had published 72 books, and written 18 more unpublished manuscripts. His work on plants was not published until centuries after his death.

In 1576 George Baker published a translation of the Evonymus of Conrad Gessner under the title of The Newe Jewell of Health, wherein is contained the most excellent Secretes of Physicke and Philosophie divided into fower bookes. Amongst his students was Felix Plater, who became a professor of medicine, and accumulated many plant specimens, but also illustrations of animals used in Historiae animalium. A year after his death, his friend Josias Simler published a biography of Gessner. Gessner and others founded the Physikalische Gesellschaft in Zurich, which later became the Naturforschende Gesellschaft in Zürich (NGZH) in 1746, to promote the study of natural sciences. Today it is one of the oldest Swiss scientific societies. The society's annual publication, the Neujahrsblatt der Naturforschenden Gesellschaft in Zürich was devoted to a biography of Gessner in 1966, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of his death.

Eponomy

In 1753 Carl Linnaeus named Tulipa gesneriana, the type species of the Tulipa genus, in his honour. The flowering plant genus Gesneria and its family Gesneriaceae are named after him. A genus of moths is also named Gesneria after him.

Memorials

• The Gessner herbal garden at the Old Botanical Garden, Zurich, is named after him, and there is a bust in the garden in his memory (see image)
• The cloister in the Carolinum, Zurich in the Grossmünster church, where Gessner is buried, also houses a herbal garden dedicated to him.
• Gessner was featured on the 50 Swiss francs banknotes issued between 1978 and 1994.
• On 16 March 2016 the State Museum in Zurich, in close collaboration with Zurich’s Central Library (Zentralbibliothek Zürich), dedicated a special exhibition to Gessner in celebration of the 500th anniversary of his birth.