Steno

Steno, NICHOLAS, anatomist and geologist, was born at Copenhagen in 1638. He was brought up a strict Lutheran, and was trained to medicine, winning great fame as an inquirer into the anatomy of the glands, the heart, and the brain. For many years he led a wandering life in Holland, France, Austria, Hungary, Italy, but in 1667 settled in Florence, and was converted to the Roman Catholic faith through the eloquence and earnestness of Bossuet. About this same period he turned his attention to geology. He was the first to point out the true origin of fossil animals; he treated of the structure of the earth's crust, clearly portraying the prevalent stratification of rocks, and discriminating between their volcanic, chemical, and mechanical modes of origination. Soon after settling in Florence he was appointed physician to the Grand-duke Ferdinand II., and later added thereto the office of tutor to the son of Grand-duke Cosimo III. But his conversion gradu- ally drew away his mind from natural science; he became a man of marked piety, was made a bishop, and in 1677 was despatched by the pope to the north of Germany to act as vicar-apostolic of those regions. He died at Schwerin on 25th November 1687. See Professor Hughes in Nature for 1882.