Johann Jacob Baier (14 June 1677 – 14 July 1735) was a German physician and naturalist who wrote on the geology and fossils of the

Nuremberg Nuremberg (, ; ; in the local East Franconian dialect: ''Nämberch'' ) is the Franconia#Towns and cities, largest city in Franconia, the List of cities in Bavaria by population, second-largest city in the States of Germany, German state of Bav ...

area in his book ''Oryctographia Norica''. He considered the Deluge of the Bible to be the only catastrophe to have occurred in earth history.

Life and work

Baier was born in

Jena Jena (; ) is a List of cities and towns in Germany, city in Germany and the second largest city in Thuringia. Together with the nearby cities of Erfurt and Weimar, it forms the central metropolitan area of Thuringia with approximately 500,000 in ...

, the son of theologian

Johann Wilhelm Baier Johann Wilhelm Baier (11 November 1647 – 19 October 1695) was a German theologian in the Lutheran scholastic tradition. He was born at Nuremberg, and died at Weimar. He studied philology, especially Oriental, and philosophy at Altdorf from ...

and Anna Katharine Musaeus. He was educated at Jena then received a degree in medicine from Halle after which he became a professor at Altdorf, Switzerland from 1704. He became a personal physician to the Emperor in 1731. Baier was elected to the Leopoldina Academy over which he presided from 1731. Apart from his collections of fossils, he also collected portraits of learned people, with a collection of nearly 600 of them. Baier also published a biographical account of the medical faculty at Altdorf. His son Ferdinand Jacob Baier (1707-1788) was also a physician and naturalist. His specimens are distributed in collections. A specimen of the ammonite ''Phylloceras heterophyllum'' was purchased by the Jena museum in 1728.

References

External links

Oryktographia norica (1708)

Sciagraphia Musei Sui (1730)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Baier, Johann Jacob German paleontologists 18th-century German naturalists 1677 births 1735 deaths Physicians from Jena Scientists from Jena 17th-century German naturalists