Nicolaus Steno (nis) (*1., 10. or 11 January 1636 in Copenhagen, Denmark, "† 21. , 25 November or 5 December 1686 in Schwerin), latinisiert out Danish Niels Stensen, was a Danish physician, Anatom and a geologist, a late catholic priest and a bishop. He is admired in the catholic church as blessed.

Life

There Steno was born in Denmark and studied there first medicine, traveled then only after suffering to the Netherlands, later to Paris, Montpellier and Pisa and met the prominent physicians and scientists of its time. After further study in Florenz he became finally a body physician of the toskanischen Grand Duke Ferdinand II.

When Lutheraner educated, Steno converted 1667 in Italy to the catholicism and 1675 to the priest, to the bishop was later geweiht. It was from now on seelsorglich responsible for the stragglers of remainders of catholic municipalities in Northern Germany and Scandinavia. Its to today continuous admiration bases in the large patience and perseverance, with which he fulfilled this task under inside and to except-church difficulties and in increasing Vereinsamung.

Nicolaus Steno died 1686 in Schwerin. As its last word the prayer is delivered: Jesus, sis mihi Jesus - "“Jesus, is me rescuer"”.

He was buried in the grave chapel of the Basilika San Lorenzo in Florenz. Nearly three hundred years later, on 23 October 1988, Nicolaus Steno was blessedly spoken by Pope Johannes Paul II.

Scientific work

Steno became admits for its independent study of nature and the break with the appointment to traditional authorities.

Anatomy

Steno examined and described as the first the watering and salivary glands of the human body and differentiated glands from lymph nodes. It described the remark course system of the Glandula parotidea, the Ductus parotideus. This is called among clinicians also Ductus stenonianus.

Mineralogy

During the investigation of quartz Steno discovered the law of the angle Konstanz, thus the fact that the surfaces of the crystals are always located to each other in the same angle independently of its size or form. It struck thereupon forwards that this is a characteristic of all mineral crystals and put thereby the foundation for modern crystallography.

Paleontology

On Steno also the realization decreases/goes back that fossils represent the remnants once living organisms and not natural rock excrescences, how this was still often accepted at its time.

Geology

Besides it carried important work in the area of geology, where it showed as the first, like sedimentary rocks develops, i.e. by slow education of horizontal layers out by wind or water for deposited mineral particles out, which store themselves one above the other according to the superposition principle set up by it. Steno recognized with the fact that the age of a sediment layer decreases upward, since ever recent layers settle on older. The existence of sedimentary rocks with up to perpendicularly running layering and heavy distortions explained Steno correctly by deformations, which must have taken place after the formation of the layers.

Works

• Observationes anatomicae (1662)
• De musculis et glandis (1664)
• Prodromus (1671)

Literature

• Hermann Wieh, Niels Stensen - its life in documents and pictures, peppering castle 1988
• Franc Sobiech, heart, God, cross. The of the Anatomen, geologist and bishop Dr. med. Niels Stensen (1638-86) (Westfalia sacra; 13), 2004

Related links

• Article in the holy encyclopedia
• Detailed biography to Niels Stensen

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