Johann Jakob Scheuchzer

Johann Jakob Scheuchzer, who lived from 1672 to 1733, was a Swiss physician and natural scientist born in Zürich. His most famous work was the Physica sacra, a four volume commentary on the Bible that presented the world as a convergence of science and religion and, with its copperplate etchings, became known as the Copper Bible. He studied at Altdorf, took his medical degree at Utrecht in 1694, returned to Zürich as a physician, obtained the professorship of mathematics in 1710 and later held the chair of physics. Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1703, he corresponded with nearly 800 scholars and published widely on Swiss natural history and his Alpine journeys. He supported Neptunism and read fossils as evidence of the Flood, and a fossil from Ohningen that he took for a drowned man proved to be a Miocene salamander, later named Andrias scheuchzeri for him.