Conrad Gessner - Career

Career

In 1535, religious unrest drove him back to Zürich, where he made an imprudent marriage. His friends again came to his aid, enabled him to study at Basel (1536), and in 1537 obtained for him the professorship of Greek at the newly founded academy of Lausanne (then belonging to Berne). Here he had leisure to devote himself to scientific studies, especially botany.

In 1540-1541 he visited the famous medical university of Montpellier, took his degree of doctor of medicine (1541) at Basel, and then settled down to practise at Zürich, where he obtained the post of lecturer in physics at the Carolinum, the precursor of the University of Zürich.

There, apart from a few journeys to foreign countries, and annual summer botanical journeys in his native land, he passed the remainder of his life. He devoted himself to preparing works on many subjects of different sorts.

His great zoological work, Historiae animalium, appeared in 4 vols. (quadrupeds, birds, fishes) folio, 1551–1558, at Zürich, a fifth (snakes) being issued in 1587 (there is a German translation, entitled Thierbuch, of the first 4 vols., Zürich, 1563): this work is the starting-point of modern zoology. Gessner was the first to describe the brown rat and the guinea pig in Europe.

There was extreme religious tension at the time Historiae animalium came out. Under Pope Paul IV it was felt that the religious convictions of an author contaminated all his writings, so it was added to the Roman Catholic Church's list of prohibited books. Gessner was Protestant.

Not content with such vast works, Gessner was also active as a linguist, putting forth in 1555 his book entitled Mithridates de differentis linguis, an account of about 130 known languages, with the Lord's Prayer in twenty-two languages.

In 1556 appeared his edition of the works of Claudius Aelianus. It includes sketches for many well-known animals, and some fictional ones, including unicorns and mermaids.

He died of the plague, the year after his ennoblement.