KIRCHER, ATHANASIUS

German archeologist; b. Geisa (Fulda), May 2, 1601;d. Rome, Oct. 30, 1690. He joined the Society of Jesus at 17 and later taught mathematics and philosophy at the Jesuit college in Würzburg. He was ordained in 1628. During the thirty years' war he was forced to go to Avignon (1632), but two years later he settled in Rome, where he taught mathematics, physics, and Oriental languages. He later devoted all his attention to archeology, especially to the interpretation of hieroglyphics found in ancient monuments and ruins. He also did some work in physics, where he is credited with the construction of convergent mirrors and projectors. The Kircher Museum that he founded in the Roman College was taken over by the state in 1870. He wrote many books about different subjects, among them: Specula melitensis encyclica (Mesina 1638); Ars magna lucis et umbrae (Rome 1645); Musurgia universalis (Rome 1650); Magnes sive de arte magnetica libri tres (1640); Itinerarium extaticum (1656); Iter extaticum II (1657); Lingua aegyptiaca restituta

(Rome 1664); Mundus subterraneus (Amsterdam 1664, 3d ed. 1671); Polygraphica seu artificium linguarum (Rome 1665); Latium, id est, nova et parallela Latii descriptio (Rome 1671).

Kircher's place in science rests primarily on his extensive writings, which give a picture of scientific understanding in the 17th century. He was a man of his time, and many of his statements have been shown to be uncritical or incorrect, but the charge of scientific falsification, which has been leveled against him, has not been substantiated.

Bibliography: k. brischar, Athanasius Kircher: Ein Lebensbild (Würzburg 1877). P. Athanasii Kircheri vita a semetipso conscripta (Augsburg 1684). l. koch, Jesuiten-Lexikon: Die Gesellschaft Jesu einst und jetzt (Paderborn 1934); photoduplicated with rev. and suppl., 2 v. (Louvain-Heverlee 1962) 2:983–984.

[e. t. spain]