Caspar Bartholin the Elder

Caspar Bartholin the Elder (1585 to 1629) was a Danish physician, scientist and theologian, born Caspar Berthelsen Bartholin in Malmø. He was a precocious child who could read at three and delivered Greek and Latin orations in public in his thirteenth year. At about eighteen he went to the University of Copenhagen and afterwards studied at Rostock and Wittenberg, then travelled through Germany, the Netherlands, England, France and Italy. In 1613 he was chosen professor of medicine at the University of Copenhagen and held the office for eleven years, until an illness led him to vow to study only divinity, after which he taught theology and became a canon of Roskilde. His Anatomicae Institutiones Corporis Humani (1611) was for many years a standard textbook of anatomy, and he was the first to describe the workings of the olfactory nerve. His sons Bertel, Thomas and Rasmus Bartholin were also scholars.